The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

Wealth follows influence.

The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.

Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.

We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.

Honest people know that the road to success and virtue always involves shared sacrifice, hard work, and gratification postponed. Telling people otherwise isn't leadership, it is pandering.

I have no talent for certainty.

It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.

He will have true glory who despises it.

Teaching is like trying to hold 35 corks underwater at once.

Remember. Or, failing that, invent.