A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

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

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.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

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

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

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

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.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Love is in your heart. If you search deeply you will find it.

Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature.

A lot of the machines that Google is built on—commodity is the polite word for them—they're regular PCs and so they're not always the most reliable.

Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.

I never really address myself to any image anybody has of me. That's like fighting with ghosts.

I do think that's so much a part of what being a director is - in working with actors - to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.

I guess when all is said and done, if there is one last commentary on me, I would want it to be said that I participated in my life. I was a full participant.

If you don't know that God loves you, he does. He loves his creation. And you're his creation.

Whatever I think, whatever I try to do, life might just turn around and... and hitch up its pants and throw me a twenty-dollar bill.

Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.