There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

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.

The essential war within, and the cause of suffering, begins with the presumption that yearning, impulse and curiosity, desire and question, exist so as to end them. To attain, to acquire, to answer.

The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought—above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.

To begin, begin.

Keep up appearances; there lies the test. The world will give thee credit for the rest.

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.

It was Noel Coward whose technique I envied and tried to emulate. I collected all his records and writing.

I want to make it so that so many things happen... that you didn't expect would happen in this series, that you realize that you have to read every one of them.

The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

The most important lesson I've learned in this business is how to say no. I have said no to a lot of temptations, and I am glad I did.

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back.