The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.

No politician is ever benefited by saving money; it is spending it that makes him.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.