The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

He who walks straight rarely falls.

There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction.

Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder…Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ... Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.

The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.

Men out of fear will cling to the thing they most fear.

Happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the Dead.

It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.

I'd like people to remember me as someone who was good at his job and seemed to mean what he said.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite -- but they all worship money.

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.