“There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.”

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.

Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes.

When a man’s stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.

Contrary to what our president believes, masks make a big difference.

There is a difference between standard of living and quality of life. Quality of life is more important.

There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.