“When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.”

It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.

That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.

Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.

It’s one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.

In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn’t the initial cost, it’s the humidity.

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.

Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.

You’ve been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-‘fess up!

Emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.

You have more people that love you than you know.

One quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.

As ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.