Writer

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

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.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

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

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

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

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.