“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”

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.

Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Unprecedented crises demand unprecedented action.

It’s not too late to get out and vote or bring someone to the polls!

The election is not just about the economy, climate change, education and health care. This is about whether we retain American democracy.

A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few.

Real change never occurs from the top on down, [but] always from the bottom on up.

This is not just an election on the issues. This is an election on the future of American democracy.

The Democrats can engage in the most reprehensible, mean-spirited, vile, vicious verbal attacks known in politics, and they get praised for it.

Every now and then, it might be a good idea for Congress to listen to the American people, not just large corporations.