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

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

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

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

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

Every man is his own hell.

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

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

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.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

Life is a dead-end street.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.