A Grouch escapes so many little annoyances that italmost pays to be one. --Kin Hubbard--

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament! --Florynce Kennedy--

Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. --Ambrose Bierce--

Advertising may be described as the science ofarresting human intelligence long enough toget money from it. --Stephen Leacock--

Advertising is 85 percent confusion and15 percent commission. --Fred Allen--

Advertising is a valuable economic factor becauseit is the cheapest way of seeling goods, particularlyif the goods are worthless. --Sinclair Lewis--

Advertising is legalized lying. --H. G. Wells--

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinksas much as you do. --Dylan Thomas--

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arrangingalimony, that reckless generosity which is found onlyin men who are giving away someone else's cash. --P. G. Wodehouse--

Every major horror of history was committed in the nameof an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishnessever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciplesof altruism? --Ayan Rand--

In our country we have those three unspeakablyprecious things: freedom of speech, freedom ofconscience, and the prudence never to practiceeither. --Mark Twain--

In America sex is an obsession, in other parts ofthe world it is a fact. --Marlene Dietrich--

America is the greatest of opportunities and theworst of influences. --George Santayana--

The discovery of America was the occasion of thegreatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greedknown in history.

--Joseph Conrad--

The genius of you Americans is that you nevermake clear-cut stupid moves, only complicatedstupid moves which make us wonder at the possi-bility that there may be something to them whichwe are missing. --Gamal Abdel Nasser--

Animals have these advantages over man: theyhave no theologians to instruct them, theirfunerals cost them nothing, and no one startslawsuits over their wills. --Voltaire--

There is no underestimating the intelligenceof the American public. --H. L. Mencken--

Democracy is the are of running the circusfrom the monkey cage. --H. L. Mencken--

Perhaps the most revolting character that the UnitedStates ever produced was the Christian business man. --H. L. Mencken--

The trouble with New York is that it has nonationality at all. It is simply a sort of free port --a place where the raw materials of civilization arereceived, sorted out, and sent further on. --H. L. Mencken--

Texas is the place where there are the most cows andthe least milk and the most rivers and the leastwater in them, and where you can look the farthestand see the least. --H. L. Mencken--

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket ofbeing sooner ended. --George Bernard Shaw--

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't under-stand that bother me, it's the parts that I dounderstand. --Mark Twain--

So far as I can remember, there is not one wordin the Gospels in praise of intelligence. --Bertrand Russell--

Scriptures....The sacred books of our holy religion,as distinguished from the false and profane writingson which all other faiths are based. --Ambrose Bierce--

The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignoranceof the person who reads it. --Robert G. Ingersoll--

No one recovers from the disease of being born; adeadly wound if there ever was one. --E. M. Cioran--

The trouble with born-again Christians is that theyare an even bigger pain the second time around. --Herb Caen--

He's a born-again Christian. The trouble is, hesuffered brain damage during rebirth. --Anonymous--

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of aremarkable Christian forebearance among men. --Ambrose Bierce--

Boyys are capital fellows in their own way, among theirmages; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. --Charles Lamb--

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skinwe are all brothers. The truth is more likely thatunder the skin we are all cannibals, assassins,traitors, liars and hypocrites. --Henry Miller--

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies. --Honore' De Balzac--

Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions. --Aldous Huxley--

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it producespimples; in others, sex laws. --Karl Kraus--

One of the serious obstacles to the improvementof our race is indiscrimiate charity. --Andrew Carnegie--

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle peoplebelieve they are doing something very clever whenthey are only wasting their time. --George Bernard Shaw--

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligenceas you can find outside an advertising agency. --Raymond Chandler--

There are three terrible ages of childhood -- 1 to10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30. --Cleveland Amory--

The secret of dealing successfully with a childis not to be its parent. --Mell Lazarus--

The best way to keep children at home is to makethe home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air

out of the tires. --Dorothy Parker--

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic. --Ralph Waldo Emerson--

We are given children to test us and make usmore spiritual. --George F. Will--

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make hismartyrdom meaningless by not committing them? --Jules Feiffer--

If Christ were here now there is one thing hewould not be -- A Christian. --Mark Twain--

The last Christian died on the cross. --Anonymous--

Organized Christianity has probably done more toretard the ideals that were its founder's thanany other agency in the world. --Richard LeGallienne--

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest developmentof professional ethics. Any pastor is free to stealcustomers from the divines of rival sects, and todenounce the divines themselves as theological quacks. --H. L. Mencken--

A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon tolive without working at the expense of the rascalswho work to live. --Voltaire--

Communism is like one big phone company. --Lenny Bruce--

It could probably be shown be facts and figures that thereis no distinctively native American criminal class --except Congress. --Mark Twain--

Conservative......A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. --Ambrose Bierce--

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. --Oscar Wilde--

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. --Nietzsche--

Corporation......An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. --Ambrose Bierce--

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done,they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do itthemselves. --Brendan Behan--

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptiblerace. Asking a working writer wht he thinks aboutcritics is likd asking a fire plug what it feelsabout dogs. --John Osborne--

The power of accurate observation is commonly calledcynicism by those who have not got it. --George Bernard Shaw--

Democracy encourages the majority to decide thingsabout which the majority is blissfully ignorant. --John Simon--

The substitution of election by the incompetent manyfor appointment by the corrupt few properly describesthe institution of Democracy. --George Bernard Shaw--

Democracy becomes a government of bullies, barelytempered by editors. --Laurence J. Peters--

One of the most common of all diseases is diagnosis. --Karl Kraus--

Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the onlydifference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereasdoctors rob you and kill you too. --Anton Chekhov--

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are madestupid by education. --Bertrand Russell--

We are shut up in schools and college recitationrooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out atlast with a bellyful of words and do not knowa thing. --Ralph Waldo Emerson--

Education is a method whereby one acquires ahigher grade of prejudices. --Laurence J. Peter--

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power onearth can ever turn it into a fact. --Honore' de Balzac--

We learn from experience that men never learnanything from experience. -- Oscar Wilde--

No one is completely unhappy at the failure ofhis best friend. --Groucho Marx--

Faith.....Belief without evidence inwhat is told by one sho speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. --Ambrose Bierce--

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical beliefin the occurrence of the improbable. --H. L. Mencken--

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows

that faith does not prove anything. --Nietzsche--

The most common of all follies is to believe passionatelyin the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation ofmankind. --H. L. Mencken--

When I can no longer bear to think of thevictims of broken homes, I begin to think of thevictims of intact ones. --Peter DeVries--

Always forgive your enemies -- Nothing annoys them so much. --Oscar Wilde--

France is th only couontry where the money fallsapart and you can't tear the toilet paper. --Billy Wilder--

What I gained by being in France was learning tobe better satisfied with my own country. --Samual Johnson--

France? I would have loved it -- without the French. --D. H. Lawrence--

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

Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form ofleisure activity. --Mortimer Adler--

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a bootstomping on a human face -- forever. --George Orwell--

"Gay" used to be one of the most agreeable words inthe language. Its appropriation by a notably morosegroup is an act of piracy. --Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.--

When a true genius appears in the world you mayknow him by this sign: that all the dunces arein confederacy against him. --Jonathon Swift--

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestorsafter the money is gone. --John Ciardi--

The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist. --Stendhal--

God seems to have left the receiver off the hookand time is running out. --Arthur Koestler--

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful personto reconcile himself to the idea that after all Godwill not help him. --H. L. Mencken--

He (God) seems to have an inordinate fondness for beetles. --J. B. S. Haldane--

The good die young -- because they see it's no use livingif you've got to be good. --John Barrymore--

On the whole, human beings want to be good, butnot too good and not quite all the time. --George Orwell--

It is almost impossible systematically to constitue a naturalmoral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us withno reason to believe that human life is to be respected.Nature, in her indifference, makes no disctinction betweengood and evil. --Anatole France--

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance ofa good example. --Mark Twain--

A government is the only know vessel that leaks from the top. --James Reston--

Every government is run by liars and nothing they sayshould be believed. --I. F. Stone--

In general, the art of government consists in takingas much money as possible from one class of thecitizens to give to the other. --Voltaire--Also a good definition of the Democratic Party.

Government is an association of men who do violenceto the rest of us. --Leo Tolstoy--

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. --Anonymous--

History is a set of lies agreed upon. --Napoleon Bonaparte--

History repeats itself; that's one of the things that'swrong with history. --Clarence Darrow--

We learn from history that we do not learn from history. --G. F. Wilhelm Hegel--

On the whole history tends to be rather poor fiction --except at its best. --Gore Vidal--

An historian is nothing more than an unsuccessful novelist. --H. L. Mencken--

History would be a wonderful thing -- if only it were true. --H. L. Mencken--

Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The onlysatisfaction comes from survival. --Jonathan Miller--

The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor anEmpire. --Voltaire--

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because itprolongs the torments of man. --Nietzsche--

There are times when you hav to choose between being humanand having good taste. --Bertoldt Brecht--

It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature theevil spirit of man. --Albert Einstein--

No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the groundsthat it was human nature. --A. A. Milne--

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resignfrom the human race. --Fred Allen--

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human raceis the human race. --Don Marquis--

Humility is no substitue for a good personality. --Fran Lebowitz--

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport;when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. --George Bernard Shaw--

A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simplyhas to go out and kill something. --Stephen Leacock--

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almostwholly on whether you are at the right or wrong endof the gun. --P. G. Wodehouse--

A husband is wha't left of the lover once the nervehas been extracted. --Helen Rowland--

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition. --Michael Korda--

Impiety....Your irreverence toward my deity. --Ambrose Bierce--

Insanity.....A perfectly rational adjustment to the insane world. --R. D. Laing--

Ireland has the honor of being the only country which neverpersecuted the Jews -- because whe never let any in. --James Joyce--

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irishway by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could. --George Bernard Shaw--

The Irish are a fair people -- they never speak well ofone another. --Samual Johnson--

The Jews are a frightened people. Twenty centuries ofChristian love have broken down their nerves. --Israel Zangwill--

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. Bygiving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us intouch with the ignorance of the community. --Oscar Wilde--

Justice.....A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service. --Ambrose Bierce--

Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and youare a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God. --Jean Rostand-

Every law is and infraction of liberty. --Jeremy Bentham--

Lawyer.....One skilled in the circumvention of the law. --Ambrose Bierce--

Lawyer.....One who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation. --H. L Mencken--

Layers are the only person in whom ignorance of the lawis not punished. --Jeremy Bentham--

If law school is so hard to get through....how come thereare so many lawyers? --Calvin Trillin--

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. --Charles Lamb--

Lawyers are ... operators of the toll bridge which anyonein search of justice must cross. --Jane Bryant Quinn--

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of restingbefore you get tired. --Jules Renard--

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unlessof course, you are an exceptionally good liar. --Jerome K. Jerome--

The liberals can understand everything but people whodon't understand them. --Lenny Bruce--

Liberal......A power worshipper without power. --George Orwell--

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stakeat the moment. --Willis Player--

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his ownside in a quarrel. --Robert Frost--

Liberty means responsibility; that is why most mendread it. --George Bernard Shaw--

Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it doesin speeches. --Will Rogers--

Life does not cease to be funny when people die and more than itceases to be serious when people laugh. --George Bernard Shaw--

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luch, a good physique andnot too much imagination. --Christopher Isherwood--

Love is the most subtle form of self-interest. --Holbrook Jackson--

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marryingthe whole girl. --Stephen Leacock--

It's possible to love a human being if you don't know themtoo well. --Charles Bukowski--

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime thatrequires an accomplice. --Charles Baudelaire--

When two people are under the influence of the mostviolent, most insane, most delusive, and most transientof passions, they are required to swear that they willremain in htat excited, abnormal and exhausting conditionuntil death do them part. --George Bernard Shaw--

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can becomefamous without ability. --George Bernard Shaw--

Don't knock masturbation -- it's sex with someone I love! --Woody Allen--

When it is a question of money, everybody is ofthe same religion. --Voltaire--

Virtue has Never been as respectable as money. --Mark Twain--

Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality andanother a dollar, and see which will respect you most. --Samuel Johnson--

If you must choose between living with your mother-in-lawand blowing your brains out, don't hesitate -- blow out hers! --Victorien Sardou--

Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly andignorant magistrate. --Bertrand Russell--

Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an erection. --Anonymous--

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possibleworlds, and the pessimist knows it. --J. Robert Oppenheimer--

A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on. --William Burroughs--

The only people who seem to have nothing to do with theeducation of the children are the parent. --G. K. Chesterton--

Patience........A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. --Ambrose Bierce--

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed fortrivial reasons. --Bertrand Russell--

When you hear a man speak of his love for his country, itis a sign he expects to get paid for it. --H. L. Mencken--

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. --Oscar Wilde--

When there are two conflicting versions of the story,the wise course is to believe the one in which peopleappear at their worst. --H. Allen Smith--

Pessimist....One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. --Oscar Wilde--

A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, andhates them for it. --George Bernard Shaw--

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunesof others. --Oscar Wilde--

The photographer is like the cod, which produces a millioneggs in order that one may reach maturity. --George Bernard Shaw--

Politeness.........The most acceptable hypocrisy. --Ambrose Bierce--

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. --H. L. Mencken--

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be apolitician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed,slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good oneor a bad one. --Henry Miller--

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. ThePresidency is now a cross between a popularity contestand a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichesthe first prize. --Saul Bellow--

Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend twoyears organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trustedwith the office. --David Broder--

Politics....Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. --Ambrose Bierce--

The standard of intellect in politics is lo low, men ofmoderate mental capacity have to stoop to reach it. --Hillaire Belloc--

All politics are based on the indifference of the majority. --James Reston--

Pray......To ask the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner who confesses his unworthiness. --Ambrose Bierce--

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices. They are morehonest. --Oscar Wilde--

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merelyrearranging their prejudices. --William James--

Psychoanalysis makes quite simple people feel they're complex. --S. N. Behrman--

Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother. --Germaine Greer--

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary toavoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything thatgoes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecesssarytyranny. --Bertrand Russell--

Ther is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanicalreligion, and that is the impulse to punish the man with asuperior capacity for happiness. --H. L. Mencken--

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you'restill a rat. --Lily Tomlin--

Ronald Reagan.....A Triumph of the embalmer's art. --Gore Vidal--

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live inhouses just as big as they can pay for. --Logan Pearsall Smith--

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't gotthe remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinctabout when to die. --Oscar Wilde--

All religions are founded on the fear of the manyand the the cleverness of the few. --Stendahl--

Most religions do not make men better, only warier. --Elias Canetti--

The idea of a good society is something you do not need areligion and eternal puhishment to buttress; you need areligion if you are terrified of death. --Gore Vidal--

Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explainrandomness. --Fran Lebowitz--

Religion is the fashinonable substitue for belief. --Oscar Wilde--

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in htesense and to the extent that we respect his theory that hiswife is beautiful and his children smart. --H. L. Mencken--

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, forit trains people as to how they shall think. --Arthur Schopenhauer--

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion thatthat survived. --Oscar Wilde--

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enoughto make us love one another. --Jonathan Swift--

Ther was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that Iam old, there is not respect for age. I missed it coming andgoing. --J. B. Priestley--

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. --George Bernard Shaw--

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only theslime of a new bureaucracy. --Franz Kafka--

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerfulKnow he is. --Jean Anouilh--

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right and wrong inconduct shows and arrested intellectual development. --Oscar Wilde--

If Geraldo Rivera is the first journalist in space, NASA cantest the effect of weightlessness on weightlessness. --Anonymous but I wish I said it--

Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewingpeople who can't talk for people who can't read. --Frank Zappa--

Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake,and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement ofour masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles. --Beverly Jones--

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not amarket award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of awarm personal gesture by the individual to himself. --John Kenneth Galbraith--

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span ofhuman existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, newand unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common senseand common decency. --H. L. Mencken--

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people withoutblushing. --George Bernard Shaw--

Sex.......The Pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and expense damnable. --Lord Chesterfield--

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right. --Woody Allen--

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. --Wilson Mizner--

Smoking is, as far as I am concerned, the entire point of being anadult. Many people find smoking objectionable. I myself find many--even more-- things objectionable. I do not like aftershave

lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, ornayone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enactinglegislation and putting up signs. --Fran Lebowitz--

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match. --Karl Kraus--

If you attack stupidity you attack an entrenched interest withfriends in government and every walk of public life, and you willmake small progress against it. --Samual Marchbanks--

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. --Oscar Wilde--

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. --Gore Vidal--

A Sunday School is a prison in which children so penance forthe evil conscience of their parents. -- H. L. Mencken --

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers itdeserves. --J. B. Priestley--

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness ofa thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out. --Dennis Diderot--

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made aninternational reputation for myself by thinking once or twice aweek. --George Bernard Shaw--

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that theyhave a right to ours. The inference is false; a gift confers norights. --Nietzsche--

As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have itsfascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to bepopular. --Oscar Wilde--

Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions. --Robert Ardrey--

As far as unwed mothers on welfare are concerned, it seems to methey must be capable of some other form of labor. --Al Capp--

I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimesrest. --Alexandre Dumas--

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for thecurious attractiveness of others. --Oscar Wilde--

Women are like elephants to me -- I like to look at 'em, but Iwould'nt want to own one. --W. C. Fields--

The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny theworld has every known; the tyranny of the weak over the strong. Itis the only tyranny that lasts. --Oscar Wilde--

In the fight between you and the world, back the world. --Frank Zappa--

If the world were a logical place, Men would ride side-saddle. --Rita Mae Brown--

The young always have the same problem -- how to rebel and conformat the same time. They have now solved this by defying theirparents and copying one another. --Quentin Crisp--

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit tobe seen? --Evelyn Waugh--

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out anyquicker than the Christmas spirit. --Kin Hubbard--�