You see things as they are and ask, ‘Why’ I dream things as they never were and ask, ‘Why not’
Better keep yourself clean and bright you are the window through which you must see the world.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.
Swindon What will history say Burgoyne History, sir, will tell lies as usual.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor he takes my measure anew every time he sees me, whilst all the rest go on with their old measurements, and expect them to fit me.
There is only one universal passion fear.
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good what would he say now
The man who listens to Reason is lost reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about They are more true they are the only things that are true.
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die and do not outlive yourself.
Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
I’m not a teacher only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead-ahead of myself as well as you.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.
You see things and you say, ‘Why’ But I dream things that never were and I say, Why not
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
I can’t forgive my friends for dying I don’t find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old we grow old because we stop playing.
He who has never hoped can never despair.
All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than the coping stone.
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
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We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
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It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
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Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
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What use are cartridges in battle I always carry chocolate instead.
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A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
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Few people think more than two or three times a year I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
Martyrdom… is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them that’s the essense of inhumanity.
Do you know what a pessimist is A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
We don’t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don’t dress well and we’ve no manners.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
Alcohol is a very necessary article… It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.
He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
Hell is full of musical amateurs music is the brandy of the damned.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
What is life but a seires of inspired follies The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance it doesn’t come every day.
I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
