Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
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.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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.
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
experience, love & women
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
Time stays, we go.
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.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
art, government & science
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
experience, men, wisdom & women
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
Husbands never become good they merely become proficient.
Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.
All government, of course, is against liberty.
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.