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.

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

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.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

If you catch yourself wondering why you want more of the world and you're not satisfied with God, it's because you have a spiritual problem.

Where there are no changes there is no life. A plant has to change to bloom.

She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there.

There is no man so low down that the cure for his condition does not lie strictly within himself.

At one point in your life, you'll have the thing you want or the reasons why you don't.

Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.

My parents divorced when I was one year old so I don't really remember any of the details, but luckily my mom does so she's been really helpful.

A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.

We cannot foresee what the Lord has in mind for us. Our only course of action is to be prepared and worthy for whatever he requires. We must govern our actions every day with our future in mind.

People who create art would be fools to assume they know exactly what people are going to think of it.