All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

When people start asking you to do the same thing over and over again, that's when you know you're way too close to something that you don't want to be near.

There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

There is only one way... to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

If a little is great, and a lot is better, then way too much is just about right!

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.