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. |
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. |
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. |
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race. |
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince. |
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. |
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age. |
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. |
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas. |
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. |
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them. |
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. |
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. |
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier. |
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers. |
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. |
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. |
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true. |
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. |
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. |