I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely gi
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth.
Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; there in they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber stamps.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.