- "Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."
- "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- "People born to be hanged are safe in water."
- "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
- "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."
- "Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'."
- "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
- "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
- "I don't give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way."
- "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."
- "All kings is mostly rapscallions."
- "It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races."
- "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
- "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself."
- "The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
- "Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
- "Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
- "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."
- "Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
- "It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."
- "It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
- "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
- "By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."
- "I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."
- "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
- "I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
- "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
- "I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
- "Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish."
- "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
- "I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it."
- "The Bible has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."
- "It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
- "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."
- "Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."
- "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- "We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
- "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
- "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
- "There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
- "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."
- "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
- "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
- "Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
- "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."
- "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- "The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."
- "The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten."
- "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
- "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
- "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
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