No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

My brothers and I love A Christmas Story. It reminds us of ourselves when we were that age." "Your father didn't want to give you a BB shotgun because you might shoot your eye out?

Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

There is a certain solipsism to serious illness which claims all of one's attention as certainly as an astronomical black hole seizes anything unlucky enough to fall within its critical radius.

I hate all that don't love me, and slight all that do.

Gossip is when you have a malice of intent or mindless, third-party conversation to someone about someone, something you haven't said to that someone.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

It's all a compost heap. You just put down a layer of humus that helps other stuff grow. Your work will all be forgotten, but it will help stuff grow.

The World has become too dangerous for anything less than Utopia.

Is what I'm doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?

Most of us are now free to walk away from our marital commitments more easily than from any other contract in our lives.