"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."

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

"If Los Angeles is not the one authentic rectum of civilization, then I am no anatomist. Any time you want to go out again and burn it down, count me in."

"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

"The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace."

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

"There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it."

"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary Hell. It is a business almost indistinguishable from that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism."

"The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda -- a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens."

"…a dog is very religious and its religion is free from superstition. The god it believes in is its master, and that god actually exists, and is actually concerned about its welfare, and actually rewards it and punishes it, on a plan comprehensible to dogs and meeting with their approval, for its virtues and vices. Dogs need not waste any time over insoluble theological problems. Their god is plainly visible and wholly understandable -- they have no need of clergy to guess for them, mislead them and get them into trouble."

"It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today." [1927]

"A strong government always wars on the superior man. Its regimenting of the inferior goes on too, but is harmless; they can't be made worse. But its enmity to the superior does real damage. Converting a million serfs into slaves merely changes their name, but wrecking one potential Goethe or Darwin may be a capital disaster to the race."

"I have often argued that a poet over thirty years old is simply an overgrown child."

"Nature abhors a moron."

"Dachshund- A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long."

"Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud."

"A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century."

"Husband: A No. 16 neck in a No. 15 1/2 collar."

"Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another."

"I don't think the boy of lively mind is hurt much by going to college. If he encounters mainly jackasses, then he learns the useful lesson that this is a jackass world."

"If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y."

"My whole life, once I get free from my present engagements, will be devoted to combating Puritanism. But in the meantime, I see clearly that the Puritans have nearly all the cards. They drew up the laws now on the statute books, and they cunningly contrived them to serve their own purposes. The only attack that will ever get anywhere will be directed - not at the Puritan heroes but at the laws they hide behind. In this attack, I am full of hope that shrapnel will play a part."

"Who will argue that 98.6 Fahrenheit is the right temperature for man? .... It may be that we are all actually freezing: hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent."

"I cross the 40-year mark with severe hay-fever, but otherwise in prime condition. I have no less than three new girls lined up to be probed during the next few weeks; I am able to drink 10 seidels of 7% without pissing my pants; I can yell as loud as a policeman; my piano technique was never better. For all of which let credit go to God."

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

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."

"It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities."

"Christian --- One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife."