Category: Quotable Quotes

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

America always does the right thing, after exhausting all possible alternatives.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

In finance, everything that is agreeable is unsound and everything that is sound is disagreeable.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Lady X to Winston Churchill: Winston, you are drunk.
Winston Churchill to Lady X: Yes, and you are ugly. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

In the course of my life I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

On cynics:

“Cynic” is a term used by an idealist to describe a realist.
                                                            —Sir Humphrey Appleby

On Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. — John Rogers

On expressing oneself:

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” — Mortimer Adler

On Trump:

Trumpty-Dumpty tried to build a great wall.

But Trumpty-Dumpty bungled it all.

All of his lawyers and all of his men

Couldn’t make Trumpty POTUS again.

H. L. Mencken on Trump:

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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.

Presenting some of my favorite quatrains from a powerful work dubiously attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), a Persian astronomer and mathematician, in its first and most famous translation into English by Edward Fitzgerald, dated 1859.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:  
The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly—
and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou  
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain – This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies –
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go  
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit  
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,  
Lift not your hands to It for help—for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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 men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.

It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.