The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

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.

Make your own sacred choices

Everyone is born with an instinct of success, and ability to make it, but only the ones who think out of the box succeed.

Young men think old men fools, old men know young men to be so.

I wish I could have healed your misery, quenched your sorrow.

Not, how much of my money will I give to God, but, how much of God’s money will I keep for myself?

I've got something to live for, because I always wanted to be an artist; I always wanted to be famous.

One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.

The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.

I just always loved to perform and I was lucky enough to be in front of the right people at the right time!

Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.