When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.

 Edward R Murrow

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

 George Orwell

The believable lie is often the best defense in court. Where would lawyers be if all we had to work with was the truth?

 William Lashner

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

 George W Bush

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

 Tom Stoppard

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

 Herb Caen

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

 Unknown

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.

 Miss Piggy

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

 Timothy Leary

I caught her full on the shoulder, jarring her grip free of me, and away she went, canoe and all, the gunwale rasping against my legs as it was whirled downstream. One glimpse I had of the white water foaming over those long beautiful legs, and then she was gone. Damnable altogether, cruel waste of good womanhood, but what would you? Better one should go than two, and greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down someone else’s life for his own.

 Brigadier-general Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.I.E.: Chevalier, Legion of Honour, U.S. Medal of Honor, etc., etc.

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.

 John Cleese

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

 Rita Mae Brown

This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end.

Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

 Laurence J Peter

I still miss being out under that Texas sky, the party and picnic atmosphere drive-ins had, and dammit, I even miss that foul mosquito coil you bought at the concession to ward off the little bloodsuckers. You were supposed to light it and in theory the smoke from it had something in it the mosquitoes hated, and they wouldn't come around. This bit of advertisement was in line with the drive-in previews. It lied. You lit that thing and put it on your dash, and about the only way it stopped a mosquito was if the ignorant sonofabitch sat on the coil and caught fire.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

 HL Mencken

Just at this modish moment, everybody under thirty and his idiot brother wants to be a film director. And why not? Let it be whispered that film directing (the very job itself) is often grossly overrated. Good paintings don’t come from a bad painter, but good motion pictures are often signed by directors of the most perfect incompetence. Writers, editors, and actors do his work for him. His only task is to speak the words “action” and “cut” and go home with the money. Such a man can, as we have seen, wing his way through fifty years of film directing and never be found out.

 Orson Wells

I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.

 Shelley Winters

My problem with Chandelier Wells was not her work, my problem was with her person. She was a celebrity, and most celebrities inhabit nothing beyond the universe of their own desires, which is a swell definition of boring.

 Stephen Greenleaf

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

 Ring Lardner

I hope one day I can clone another Dick Cheney. Then I won't have to do anything.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

I might beweep a bit too much my outcast state, but there are admitted joys in this job. Chief among them is cashing a retainer check. I also like cross-examining fools, reading deposition transcripts—that’s a little sick, I know, but there it is—and instructing my secretary to hold all calls. I especially like the way people recoil when I tell them I’m a lawyer. Try it sometime at a party or on the street, tell someone you’re a lawyer and watch as they dance away. It almost makes me want to work for the IRS.

 William Lashner

Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

 Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

The Blue Hawaii was cold and too sweet, but it looked good in the glass. The thing I love about a blue drink is that it isn’t pretending to be anything other than a prissy, made-up concoction for people who can’t drink their whiskey straight. A cocktail with the courage of its convictions.

 William Lashner

Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.*

 Chuckles the Clown

*Translation: A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants.

I can cheerfully say I don’t give a damn. I don’t have to believe in my client; I just have to believe in the legal tender he’s tendering. A lawyer is really nothing more than a mechanic. Bring in your life, with all its troubles, and I’ll open the hood, poke around, see if any legal tricks at my disposal can fix the problem. It isn’t personal, I don’t make judgements about the quality of the car. I just roll up my sleeves. When was the last time your auto mechanic took it personally when your engine needed a valve job? He shakes his head, sure, and clucks his tongue, and says all the right things when he tells you the bad news, like an oncologist with really dirty hands, but trust me, he doesn’t take it personally. Instead he takes Visa or MasterCard.

 William Lashner

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

 Franklin D Roosevelt

President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to Muhammad Ali yesterday. Yeah, it was sort of embarrassing. He could barely speak, he wasn't making any sense ... but Muhammad was very understanding about it.

 Jay Leno

Speak when you are angry  and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.

 Laurence J Peter

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

 Ellen DeGeneres

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

 Orson Welles

The police brass also believed, deep down, that the goat very likely deserved what he was getting--not for the stated crime but for a dozen others they assumed he had got away with earlier in his career. A narrow, mean view of life, Teddy thought, that came from the hundred-year domination of the department by the Irish, who knew that we are all sinners and must pay for it sooner or later. It was a sentiment he didn't share, not least because he had been raised Italian, among people who also believed we are all sinners but that there is no good reason not to get away with it forever.

 Vincent Patrick

You know what a promise is to a politician? It's what a dog turd is to a dog, something that you drop every so often that's got no practical use.

 Dick Lochte

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

He was a nose-picker, and about the best I've ever seen at it. He didn't do it like a lady will do, like she ain't really doing it, but just scratching, and her finger will shoot in and scoop out the prize and she'll flick it away before you can say, "Hey, ain't that a booger?" He didn't even do it like some men do, which is honest, but unpolite. They'll turn sort of to the side and get in there after it in a businesslike manner, but you don't really have to witness the work or what come of it. No, Checkers Chauncey went about digging his front-on and open. And when he got what he was looking for, he always held it up just to see, I guess, if he'd accidentally found something other than what he expected, and when he thumped it away you have to be kind of fast on your feet, because he didn't care who or what it stuck to.

 Joe R Lansdale

Note from Lee: Varley picks the quotes, too.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

 Quentin Crisp

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

 Mark Twain

The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of the day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick thriving for the anal gulch.

 Joe R Lansdale

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

 Ronald Reagan

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

 John Lithgow

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee...that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again.

 George W Bush

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.

 Laurence J Peter

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

 Blaise Pascal

Getting caught is the mother of invention.

 Robert Byrne

To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

 Ambrose Bierce

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.

 Dave Barry

Certain people have said that the world is like a calm pond, and that any time a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action. If this is true, then the book you are reading now is the perfect thing to drop into a pond. The ripples will spread across the surface of the pond and the world will change for the better, with one less dreadful story for people to read and one more secret hidden at the bottom of a pond, where most people never think of looking.

 Lemony Snicket

Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, “Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking."

 David Letterman

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

 Abraham Lincoln

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

 John Adams

"My father spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren't."

"Such as ..."

"Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhea, that sort of thing. He also thought that 'abbreviation' was too long for its meaning, that 'monosyllabic' should have one syllable, 'dyslexic' should be renamed 'O' and 'unspeakable' should be respelt 'unsfxpxkable.'"

 Jasper Fforde

The Nursery Crime Division offices were cramped and untidy. No. They were worse than that. They had gone through cramped and untidy, paused briefly at small and shabby before ending up at pokey and damp.

 Jasper Fforde

Q: Your Wikipedia entry defines you as author, screenwriter, and accordionist. Is that how you would describe yourself?

A: I find that nothing makes people back away faster at a social gathering than "accordionist." Except perhaps "screenwriter." And, even "author" always makes people nervous, so I usually say "writer."

 Daniel Handler

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

 Voltaire

I'm like King Midas in reverse. Everything I touch turns to shit.

 Tony Soprano

I have a fwiend in Wome called Biggus Dickus. Stwike him, Centuwion, vewy woughly! And have him fwown in the Awena! I want him fighting wabid animals wiffin the week! Now... would anyone ewse wike to make fun of my fwiend, Biggus... Dickus?

 Pontius Pilate

Spring had choked off pretty much for good, it seemed. It was late April and unseasonably hot, like two rats in caps and sweaters fucking in a wool sock under a sun lamp.

 Joe R Lansdale

Life's like a bowl of chili in a strange cafe. Sometimes it's pretty spicy and tasty. Other times, it tastes like shit.

 Jim Bob Luke

I didn't have long to wonder as a knock at the door revealed an untidy man wearing a hat named Wyatt.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, apologizing for the misrelated grammatical construction almost immediately. "Wyatt is my name, not the hat's."

"I kind of figured that," I replied.

Wooden and worn with use, he was holding a clipboard.

"Oh, bother!" he said in the manner of someone who had just referred to George Eliot as "he" in a room full of English professors. "I've done it again!"

"Really, I don't mind," I repeated. "What can I do for you?"

"You're very kind. As a Character Exchange Program member, I would like to ask you to get yourself into Reading." He stopped and his shoulders sagged. "No, I'm not the Character Exchange Program member, you are. And you need to get into Reading."

"Sure. Do you have an address for me?"

Dog-eared and grubby, he handed me a note from his clipboard.

"Don't worry," I said before he could apologize again. "I understand."

His condition was almost certainly permanent.

"The last Character Exchanger didn't take it seriously at all. Had to send him dusty and covered in asphalt on the road out of here."

He thanked me, and small, brown and furry, the man with the hat named Wyatt raised it and vanished.

 Thursday Next

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

 Will Rogers

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

 Thomas Paine

Thursday, this is for your own good. You told me you heard them yourself, and officers Hurdyew, Tolkein, and Lissning heard you talking and listening to someone in the upstairs corridor.

 Jasper Fforde

Capitalists are hanged by the rope they sell their enemies. Mystics who help formulate great religious movements writhe in sexual torment over impure thoughts a shoe salesman leaves behind with adolescence. A Crusader knight in search of the True Cross returns from Marseilles from Palestine with a trunkful of Saracen robes, inside of which is a plague-infested mouse.

 Dave Robicheaux

“My father taught me that. He had simple admonitions: 'Feed your animals before you feed yourself ... Take care of your tools and they'll take care of you ... Put your shotgun through the fence, then crawl after it.' My favorite was 'Never trust a white person black people don't like.'"

All the meteorologists predicted Katrina would hit New Orleans head-on, at category 5 wind speeds of 175 mph. No knowledgeable person had any doubt about the consequences. New Orleans would have been nothing but a smudge in the storm's aftermath, the levees reduced to serpentine traces in the silt. Instead, the storm shifted toward the northeast, and dropped in velocity by 35 mph, reducing itself to a category 4 storm by landfall.

Two days after the city was flooded, the president stated, on television, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." The disingenuousness of the statement, or its disconnection from reality, is, to my mind, beyond comprehension.

I was on a seismograph drill barge during Hurricane Audrey in 1957 and, as a news reporter, I covered Hurricane Hilda when it hit Louisiana in 1964. But nothing I ever experienced compares with the suffering of the people in Orleans and St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes and southern Mississippi during recent weeks. That the elderly and the infirm could drown in retirement homes and hospitals in the U.S. has forced us into an introspection that I hope will lead people from dismay to anger.

For the rest of my life, however, I want to remember not only the faces of Katrina's victims but the images of the Coast Guard rescuers hanging from cables under helicopters; firefighters and cops who threaded boats through the darkness while being shot at; the medical personnel who used hand ventilators to keep their patients alive for six days; the soldiers and ministers and ordinary people who gave up all thought of themselves in service to their fellow human beings. In their anonymity, they glow with the aura of Byzantine saints.

 James Lee Burke

We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

They dropped me off by the side of the road, and I thanked them before running up the street. It was already quite dark and the streetlamps were on. It didn't look like the world was about to end in twenty-six minutes, but then I don't suppose it ever does.

 Tuesday Next

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

 Robert A Heinlein

Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House.

 Conan O'Brien

Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home.

 Bill Maher

Bush is keeping track of Hurricane Rita as it hits his home state of Texas. That's Bush's worst nightmare: an electric chair with no power.

 Jay Leno

The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had.

I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.

 Joe R Lansdale

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

 Emo Philips

An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others.

 Tom Wolfe

Now, I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

Yeah, listen to your mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out, and no one is speaking to you: mission accomplished! Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?!

Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying that there's so many other things that you, as president, could involve yourself in…Please don't. I know, I know, there's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote. But, sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man.

Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans…Maybe you're just not lucky!

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, “Take a hint.”

 Bill Maher

Uncle Junior and I, we had our problems with the Business. But I never should have razzed him about eating pussy. This whole war could have been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.

 Tony Soprano

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

The real horror is not in the shadows, but in that little twisted world inside our own skulls.

 Robert Bloch

This guy looked like a grown-up, but actually he had the mind of a dumb little kid inside. Like that guy in Sling Blade, or the president.

 Christopher Moore

If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them. The key is to find someone whose insanity dovetails with your own.

 Christopher Moore

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

 Don Marquis

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

 Kurt Vonnegut

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.

 Winston Churchill

Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

“Let’s go, let’s go!” cried Moxie.

“Yes, let’s!” added Pepsi, who promptly took one step, fell directly on his flat head, and managed to bloody his nose.

Frito rolled his eyes heavenward. It was going to be a long epic.

 Bored of the Rings

Arabian horses everywhere are living in fear, again, that Michael Brown might soon be coming back to manage them.

 Email read on CNN

This is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection - or at least amelioration - against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

 Keith Olbermann

"[I told Bush he should fire Michael Brown.] He said, 'Why would I do that?' I said, 'Because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said, 'What didn't go right?' He's oblivious, in denial, dangerous."

 Nancy Pelosi

What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (chuckles) is working very well for them.

 Barbara Bush at the Astrodome

It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future or past to the back.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food.

 Kanye West

And the Lord spake, saying, First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

 Monty Python

There were no mortgages in a casino, no children needing food, no car needing repairs, no work, no time, no day, no night; those things  the context of money  were someplace else. A place where people returned before they realized that a turd rolled in rhinestones is a turd nonetheless.

As flies to wanton boys, we are to the Gods;
They kill us for their sport.

 Shakespeare

A film is  or should be  more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

 Stanley Kubrick

Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.

 Christopher Moore

I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

Ninety-five percent of all the species that have ever existed are extinct, so don't look so goddamn smug.

 Gerard Ryder

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. 

 Herm Albright

Frito rode last in the procession away from the Gallowine toward Riv’n’dell. He slipped his hand into his pocket, found the Ring, and took it out in the fading light. Already it was beginning to work its slow changes on him, the transformation of which Dildo had warned. He was constipated.

 BORED OF THE RINGS

The Greeks did ever study how to enter the walls and put that mighty castle [Troy] to the torch, and it was through the counsels of the wizard Socrates that they came upon a plot so low, so vile, so foul that it has served as a model of statesmanship ever since.

 Nicholas Seare

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

 Samuel Goldwyn

The modern blend of vulgarity and prudery finds telling expression in the tale of the matron who, upon a footpath, cried out, "Oh, shit! I just stepped in doggy-doo!"

 Nicholas Seare

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

 Kurt Vonnegut

In America satire is protected speech even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.

 Al Franken

I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.

 Donald Rumsfeld

The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

 Winston Churchill

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.

 Frank Zappa

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

 Winston Churchill

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

 Fred Allen

They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.

 Gandhi

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

 Winston Churchill

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

 H L Mencken

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

 Steven Wright

The hardest thing in the world isn't to refrain from doing an evil, it's to stand up and stop one.

 Don Winslow

I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think... and I assume it's what I said.

 Donald Rumsfeld

Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the identity of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.

 George H.W. Bush

It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.

You can take a fly swatter and kill a bunch of flies, but what the hell, you don't need to count them.

 Paul Tibbets

We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

 Louis Brandeis

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

 W Somerset Maugham

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.

Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. There is no need to worry about a protracted war because from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

Drugs have taught an entire generation of Americans the metric system.

 PJ O'Rourke

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

 Herman Melville

You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat eight.

 Yogi Berra

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

 Fran Lebowitz

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

 Howard Aiken

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who do you think you're talking to? Oh yeah? Huh? Ok.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

 Dorothy Parker

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?

 Will Rogers

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

 John Stuart Mill

 forward from Croz

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

 Eugene McCarthy

I never said most of the things I said.

 Yogi Berra

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

 Sir Winston Churchill

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

This is the Mafia. Shit flows down. Money flows up.

 Tony Soprano

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

 Robert A Heinlein

The three differences between American and British people:

● We speak English and you don't.

● When we hold a World Championship for a particular sport, we invite teams from other countries to play, as well.

● When you meet the head of state in Great Britain, you only have to go down on one knee.

 John Cleese

Back in the Twentieth Century girls had used baseball terminology. “First base” referred to petting and kissing; “second base” referred to groping and fondling ... commonly known as “heavy petting”; “third base” referred to fellatio...; and “home plate” meant conception-mode intercourse.... In the year 2000, in the era of hooking up, “first base” meant deep kissing (“tonsil hockey”), groping, and fondling; “second base” meant oral sex; “third base” meant going all the way; and “home plate” meant learning each other’s names.

 Tom Wolfe

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.

 Steven Wright

Invention is 93% perspiration, 6% inspiration, 3% electricity and 2% Butter scotch ripple.

  Willy Wonka

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

 Yogi Berra

The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet  it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars  that’s the Biblical view.

 Ann Coulter

What's scary, my friends, is that she's dead serious.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking, "Did he fire six shots, or only five?" To tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and will blow your head clean off... you've gotta ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

 Dirty Harry

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

 Reg of Nazareth

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years, and hell, we're not using it anymore.

 Jay Leno

Boy, I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

 Yogi Berra

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

 Robert A. Heinlein

Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

 Abraham Lincoln

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

 Woody Allen

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

 Will Rogers

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

 Scott Adams

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

 George Carlin

Despite the tendency of Liberals to dissipate energy in rhetoric, to be self-congratulatory, and to sacrifice practical advantage on the altar of dogma, I have found them preferable to the political craftiness of the new Conservative establishment, which deifies profit, sanctifies enterprise, and is bent on ideological domination. It was a matter of choosing the less harmful of two political views. At least you can have dinner with a Liberal. He will be annoying, and his reasoning soft-centered, but he will not live, as his NeoCon opposite number does, in a stew of hate, fear and envy that frequently manifests itself as religious fervor.

In contemporary America there is not, alas, an effective national party for informed people of compassionate instincts; our only choice is between a party of the right, and a party of the extreme right.

 Trevanian

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office

 Aesop

HE DIED IN 33 AD. GET OVER IT.

 Bumper Sticker

Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but people can see your lips moving.

 Penn Jillette

The sausage dog is a remarkable dog. It belongs to that genus of dogs marked out by their proximity to the ground. In most cases this is because of the shortness of the legs. If a dog has short legs, we have found that the body is almost invariably close to the ground.

 Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Iglefeld

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

 Abraham Lincoln

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

 Douglas Adams

The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.

 George W Bush

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

 Jim Hightower

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.

 Fred Allen

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim."

 Lyndon B Johnson

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?

 Steven Wright

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

 Ambrose Bierce

Everybody in Botswana had experienced trouble with ants, and everybody had a view of what to do. But nobody ever succeeded: the ants always returned. Perhaps it was because they had been there before people had arrived and regarded it as their place. Perhaps the country should be called Botshoswane, rather than Botswana; this meant the Place of the Ants. No doubt that's what the ants called it anyway.

 Alexander McCall Smith

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

 Frank Zappa

"I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican."

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

 Dan Quayle

It is sobering to remember that for four years this man was one gunshot away from the Presidency.

 John Varley

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

 Groucho Marx

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is “to be prepared.”

 Dan Quayle

“We cannot stay here,” said Arrowroot.

“No,” agreed Bromosel, looking across the gray surface of the page to the thick half of the book still in the reader’s right hand. “We have a long way to go.”

 BORED OF THE RINGS

Why is it that physicists always require so much expensive equipment? The Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers ... and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.

 Isaac Asimov

Plato wrote: “It ain’t whatcha do it’s the way thatcha do it.” Then, deciding that the world was not yet ready for this, he scrubbed it out.

 Robert Sheckley

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quois.

 Peter Schickele

First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

 Michael Caine

It's 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses!....................HIT IT!!!

 Elwood Blues

The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.

 Harlan Ellison

Now we’ve seen pictures of Saddam Hussein in his underdrawers. CNN reports that the Pentagon has vowed to “get to the bottom” of this situation. Personally, seeing a 68-year-old guy in his skivvies was quite enough for me. I don’t know if I can handle the bottom.

 John Varley

A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

The company stood rooted to the ground in terror. The creature was about fifty feet tall, with wide lapels, long dangling participles, and a pronounced gazetteer.

“Aiyee!” shouted Legolam. “A Thesaurus!”

“Maim!” roared the monster. “Mutilate, mangle, crush. See HARM!”

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
 

 Dwight D Eisenhower

My love flew like a butterfly,
Until death swooped down like a bat,
As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said,
"That's the end of that."
 

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

 Honore de Balzac

In America, anybody can be president; that's one of the risks you take.

When the poet Paul Valery once asked Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied. "It's so seldom I have one."