Politics makes estranged bedfellows.
 -- Goodman Ace

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
 -- Edward Abbey

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
 -- Henry Adams

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
 -- Woody Allen

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead.
 -- Woody Allen

Jack Benny played Mendelsson last night. Mendelsson lost.
 -- Anonymous

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
 -- Sir Edward Appleton

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
 -- Russel Baker

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.
 -- Alben W. Barkley

Life is a long lesson in humility.
 -- James M. Barrie

If you suveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the 'Beverly Hillbillies'.
 -- Dave Barry

The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning "ability to," and bics, meaning "withstand tremendous boredom."
 -- Dave Barry

The old system of having a baby was much better than the new system, the old system being characterized by the fact that the man didn't have to watch.
 -- Dave Barry

I've noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.
 -- Dave Barry

It is not necesssary to understand things in order to argue about them.
 -- Caron de Beaumarchais

It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
 -- Sir Thomas Beecham

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
 -- Ingmar Bergman

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
 -- Ambrose Bierce

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
 -- Ambrose Bierce

Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts.
 -- Henry Blaha

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
 -- Erma Bombeck

I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill.
 -- Erma Bombeck

Guidelines for Bureaucrats: 1. When in charge, ponder. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in doubt, mumble.
 -- James H. Borden

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.
 -- David Brinkley

The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
 -- Victor Borge

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is satire. All you're doing is recording it.
 -- Art Buchwald

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victems he intends to eat until he eats them.
 -- Samuel Butler

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.
 -- John Cage

Automatic simply means that you can't repair it yourself.
 -- Frank Capra

We're having something a little different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we're having a swan. You get more stuffing.
 -- George Carlin

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
 -- Nicholas Chamfort

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
 -- John Ciardi

I find it rather easy to protray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
 -- John Cleese

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you don't like?
 -- Jean Cocteau

Cookbooks bear the same relation to real books that microwave food bears to your grandmother's.
 -- Andrei Codrescu

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
 -- Cyril Connolly

I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.
 -- Noel Coward

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
 -- Quentin Crisp

An appeal is when you ask one court to show it's contempt for another court.
 -- Finley Peter Dunne

Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals.
 -- Finley Peter Dunne

Never judge a book by its movie.
 -- J.W. Eagan

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
 -- Abba Eban

Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.
 -- Arnold Edinborough

For most men life is a search for the proper manilla envelope in which to get themselves filed.
 -- Clifton Fadiman

Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
 -- William Feather

You can't find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.
 -- Carrie Fisher

Instant gratification takes too long.
 -- Carrie Fisher

To be stupid, selfish, an have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
 -- Gustave Flaubert

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
 -- Redd Foxx

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
 -- Milton Friedman

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
 -- Gandhi

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.
 -- J. Paul Getty

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
 -- Brendan Gill

People come to Washington believing it is the center of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that Washington is a steering wheel that's not connected to an engine.
 -- Richard Goodwin

No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend.
 -- Groucho Marx

I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about.
 -- William Hazlitt

There are more fools in the world than there are people.
 -- Heinrich Heine

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.
 -- Katherine Hepburn

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.
 -- Alfred Hitchcock

I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
 -- Alfred Hitchcock

There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.
 -- Alfred Hitchcock

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
 -- Alfred Hitchcock

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
 -- Eric Hoffer

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
 -- Elbert Hubbard

A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
 -- Kin Hubbard

Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.
 -- Kin Hubbard

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
 -- Kin Hubbard

One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before.
 -- Kin Hubbard

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
 -- Kin Hubbard

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
 -- Aldous Huxley

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
 -- Aldous Huxley

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
 -- W. R. Inge

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.
 -- Clive James

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
 -- P.D. James

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
 -- Thomas Jefferson

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.
 -- John Maynard Keynes

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.
 -- Henry Kissinger

Ninty percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.
 -- Henry Kissinger

Everyone who ever walked barefoot into his child's room late at night hates Legos.
 -- Tony Kornheiser

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
 -- Alfred A. Knopf

Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
 -- Joseph Wood Krutch

The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
 -- Louis Kronenberger

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk.
 -- Fran Lebowitz

Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
 -- Oscar Levant

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, especially if they are worthless.
 -- Sinclair Lewis

People will buy anthing that is 'one to a customer.'
 -- Sinclair Lewis

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
 -- Norman Mailer

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
 -- Edward Shepherd Mead

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has decended from man.
 -- H.L. Mencken

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

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory as the wish to forget it.
 -- Montaigne

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
 -- Lewis Mumford

The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually beomes a cat.
 -- Ogden Nash

I don't understand the appeal of Spuds McKenzie. He's always surrounded by beautiful women. Now, I'm single, and I know the pickin's can be mighty slim, but you have to be really desperate to date out of your own species.
 -- Susan Norfleet

Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
 -- Robert Orben

Cab drivers are living proof that practice does not make perfect.
 -- Howard Ogden

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
 -- Lester Pearson

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
 -- Laurence J. Peter

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
 -- Laurence J. Peter

A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
 -- Arthur Wing Pinero

Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
 -- Dan Rather

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
 -- Pierre August Renoir

There ought to be one day -- just one -- where there is open season on senators.
 -- Will Rogers

When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.
 -- Andy Rooney

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.
 -- Andy Rooney

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it facinating.
 -- Harold Rosenberg

If I had a hammer, I'd use it on Peter, Paul, and Mary.
 -- Howard Rosenberg

In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.
 -- Rita Rudner

Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.
 -- Rita Rudner

My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.
 -- Rita Rudner

My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
 -- Rita Rudner

I want to have children and I know my time is running out: I want to have them while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.
 -- Rita Rudner

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
 -- Rita Rudner

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
 -- Rita Rudner

Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.
 -- John Ruskin

I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner.
 -- Mark Russel

Acting is like roller skating. Once you know how to do it, it is neither stimulating nor exciting.
 -- George Sanders

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
 -- George Bernard Shaw

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian class and the neurotic class.
 -- George Bernard Shaw

The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.
 -- George Bernard Shaw

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
 -- Wilfred Sheed

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.
 -- Isaac Stern

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
 -- Robert Louis Stevenson

The best reason I can think of for not running for president of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.
 -- Adlai Stevenson

Some people approach every problem withan open mouth.
 -- Adlai Stevenson

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork and picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
 -- Tom Stoppard

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
 -- Johnathan Swift

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.
 -- Lewis Thomas

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance -- a sharp, vindictive glance.
 -- James Thurber

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
 -- James Thurber

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
 -- James Thurber

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
 -- Lily Tomlin

The national sport of England is obstacle racing. People fill their rooms with useless and cumbersome furniture, and spend the rest of their lives trying to dodge it.
 -- Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
 -- Pierre Trudeau

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
 -- Mark Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
 -- Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy -- when there is money in it.
 -- Mark Twain

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.
 -- Mark Twain

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
 -- Mark Twain

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.
 -- Mo Udall

A healthy adult male bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
 -- John Updike

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
 -- Peter Ustinov

Muscles come and go; flab lasts.
 -- Bill Vaughan

An ugly baby is a very nasty object, and the prettiest is frightful when undressed.
 -- Queen Victoria

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
 -- Gore Vidal

Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.
 -- Eli Wallach

Actions lie louder tha words.
 -- Carolyn Wells

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it merely had been detected.
 -- Oscar Wilde

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
 -- Oscar Wilde

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
 -- Oscar Wilde

When good Americans die they go to Paris. When bad Americans die they go to America.
 -- Oscar Wilde

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
 -- Oscar Wilde

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
 -- Oscar Wilde

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
 -- Oscar Wilde

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
 -- Oscar Wilde

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
 -- Oscar Wilde

Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.
 -- George Will

I did a picture in England one winter and it was so cold I almost got married.
 -- Shelley Winters

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
 -- Alexander Wolcott

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
 -- Steven Wright

An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attourney can delay one even longer.
 -- Evelle J. Younger

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
 -- Frank Zappa

It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, 'launder' became a dirty word.
 -- William Zinsser