A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

The new political gospel: public office is private graft.

Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.