“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

Change is not progress.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.

For mankind as a whole, a possession infinitely more valuable than individual life is our genetic heritage, our link with past and future… Yet genetic deterioration through man-made agents is the menace of our time.

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.

I really hope that I can be helpful in that journey because I do believe that women deserve the same pay. We work just as hard as men do. I’ve been working, playing tennis, since I was three years old. And to be paid less just because of my sex – it doesn’t seem fair.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

One cannot deny that in former times man’s life had been one of toil and hardship. It is correct to say, therefore, that modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man’s life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail.

It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.

If you ask men why they did a good job, they’ll say, ‘I’m awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?’ If you ask women why they did a good job, what they’ll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.