"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."
"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."
"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time."
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."
"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies."
"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods."
"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."
"God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety."
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."
"Historian: an unsuccessful novelist."
"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."
"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."
"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."
"Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him."
"Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too."
"A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married."
