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