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An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
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.
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.
