“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.”

A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.

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.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.

The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.

Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Imagine if you were a drummer, and you accidentally picked up two magic wands instead of sticks. There you are, keeping the beat, the next thing you know, your bass player turns into a can of soup.

Theory is knowledge that doesn’t work. Practice is when everything works and you don’t know why.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

A smile can get you far, but a smile with a gun can get you further.

Life is funny. Things change, people change, but you will always be you, so stay true to yourself and never sacrifice who you are for anyone.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Life is a funny thing, the minute you think you’ve got everything figured out something comes along and turns it all upside down.