George Orwell
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. (1984)
Will Rogers
A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.
A conference is just an admission you want somebody to join you in your troubles.
Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
Communism is like Prohibition, it’s a good idea but it won’t work.
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
It’s not the things we don’t know that get us in to trouble; it’s the things we do know that ain’t so.
The best doctor in the world is a veterinarian. He can’t ask his patients what the matter is. He’s got to just know.
The minute you read something you can’t understand, you can be almost sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.
We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb as they go by.
You can’t say civilisation don’t advance, for every war will kill you a new way.
You take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat immediately.
Bertrand Russell
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed.
I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pig headed fool.
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
If we were all given by magic the power to read each others thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
I think that bad philosophers may have a certain influence, good philosophers, never.
Many people would die sooner than think. In fact they do.
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.
George Bernard Shaw
Common-sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well dance with it.
In heaven an angel is nobody particular.
It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
Nobel Prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.
Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
We’ve no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than to consume wealth without producing it.
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
Adlai Stevenson
A beauty is a woman you notice, a charmer is one who notices you.
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
Flattery is like a cigarette - it’s all right so long as you don’t inhale.
He who slings mud, usually loses ground.
I offer my opponents a bargain; if they will stop telling falsehoods about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact sometimes he has to eat them.
Making peace is harder than making war.
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.
Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
What a man knows at 50 which he didn’t know at 20 is, for the most part, incommunicable.
Your public servants serve you right.
Harry S. Truman
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell
I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them. That’s all the powers of the President amount to.
If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
It’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job, it’s a depression when you lose your own.
Men don’t change. The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.
The buck stops here.
The President spends most of his time kissing people on the cheek in order to get them to do what they ought to do without getting kissed.
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Mark Twain
A banker is a fellow who lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Get the facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
I’m opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Man - a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
Nothing needs reforming as other peoples’ habits.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics.
There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.