We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
An index is a great leveller.
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.
It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire the other is to get it.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
My reputation grows with every failure.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Power does not corrupt men fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
You use a glass mirror to see your face you use works of art to see your soul.
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.