“It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.”

There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”

People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.

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.

I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.

Ever since I was a little boy, I dreamed I would do something important in aviation.

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.