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