A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks for the cloud it lines. A wise happy person does the exact opposite.

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.

Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them.

No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.