Will Rogers Quotes

He [Calvin Coolidge] is the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone.

No nation ever had two better friends that we have. You know who they are? The Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.

I would never make a good economist. You know, an economist is a man that can tell you anything about — well, he will tell you what can happen under any given condition — and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's, too.

Common sense ain't common.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

Everyone wants to vote for the best and most qualified man, but he never runs for office.

It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.

There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches.

The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that the Democrat is a cannibal, they live off each other, while the Republicans live off the Democrats.

Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.

Last year we said, 'Things can't go on like this', and they didn't, they got worse.

Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.

Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.

Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to a select few.

If you let women have their way, you will generally get even with them in the end.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.

A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn't go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he's got.

The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back

Will Rogers used to say he wouldn't run for president no matter how badly the country needed a comedian.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.

If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest barometer in the world.

You know, a Communist's whole life work is based on complaint of how everything is done.... So if they ever get their country running good they will defeat their own cause.

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?

When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Texas is a great state. It's the 'Old Man River' of states. No matter who runs it or what happens to it politically, it just keeps rolling along!

There is one guaranteed formula for failure, and that is to try to please everyone.

There are two things I don't care how smart you are, you will never understand. One is an alienist's testimony, and the other is a railroad timetable.

The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, 'How is the president?'

So let's be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

My father was one-eighth Cherokee indian and my mother was quarter-blood Cherokee. I never got far enough in arithmetic to figure out how much injun that made me, but there's nothing of which I am more proud than my Cherokee blood.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs.

If a man ain't nothin' else, then he's an artist. It's the only thing he can claim to be that nobody can prove he ain't.

You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.

You can't tell what a man is like or what he is thinking when you are looking at him. You must get around behind him and see what he has been looking at.

On prohibiting anybody from learning anything: Why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

I like to hear a man talk about himself because then I never hear anything, but good.

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.