"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

"I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them."

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

"Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient."

"Time stays, we go."

"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end."

"Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates."

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."

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

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."

"Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man."

"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."

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."

"Life is a dead-end street."

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."

"Most people want security in this world, not liberty."

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor."

"No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single."

"Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true."

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

"The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt."

"No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not."

"We must be willing to pay a price for freedom."

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands."

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."

"A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents."

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

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."

"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught."

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

"Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him."

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

"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense."

"The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression."

"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."

"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety."

"Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself."

"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race."

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

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

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."

"Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil."