“The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.”

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.

Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.

The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It’s a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.

The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.

The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.

Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.

Eventually, they’ll just go away, because you will make them sad. That’s something I’ve proven quite adept at doing over the years.