High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.

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.

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.

There is only one categorical imperative in golf, and that is to hit the ball. There are no minor absolutes.

Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.

Every novelist should write something for children at least once in his lifetime.

I fell in love again (laughs).

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

Events often move faster than our ability to comprehend them.

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

I've had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.