Famous Quotes & Sayings

Paul Krassner

People don't like to be lectured to, but if you can make them laugh, their defenses come down, and for the time being they've accepted whatever truth is embedded in your humor.

Paul Krassner

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism.

Martin Luther

Sin cannot tear you away from him [Christ] even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.

Mose Allison

There's a few tunes of mine that don't have jokes, but most of them have a joke and they have a humorous point of view somewhere.

P. G. Wodehouse

He was a long, stripy policeman, who flowed out of his uniform at odd spots, as if Nature, setting out to make a constable, had had a good deal of material left over which she had not liked to throw away but hardly seemed able to fit into the general scheme.

P. G. Wodehouse

It looked something like a pen wiper and something like a piece of hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekinese puppy.

P. G. Wodehouse

There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

P. G. Wodehouse

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't

P. G. Wodehouse

The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.

P. G. Wodehouse

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

Marshall McLuhan

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

Marion Ross

But if you don't watch me, I will try and sneak in some humor. I see humor everywhere in life around me.

Margery Allingham

Of all the band of personal traitors the sense of humor is the most dangerous.

Neil Young

Holding back is so close to stealing.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

P. J. O'Rourke

I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.

P. J. O'Rourke

The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.

P. J. O'Rourke

East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

P. J. O'Rourke

Each American embassy comes with two permanent features - a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards.

P. J. O'Rourke

The Democrats said, "We don't know what's wrong with America, but we can fix it." The Republicans said, "There's nothing wrong with America, and we can fix that."

P. J. O'Rourke

I was told to hand over my disposable lighter, to prevent, I suppose, any threat of "Do what I say or I'll light this Marlboro and you'll all die - in thirty years due to inhalation of secondhand smoke."

P. J. O'Rourke

Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges.

P. J. O'Rourke

The Russians could have some (warheads) aimed at Japan, so if we act up they can destroy our economy.

P. J. O'Rourke

It was to be a short visit for the G-shevs. More than four days in the U.S. and Raisa's VISA card bill would shatter the fragile Soviet economy.

P. J. O'Rourke

It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

P. J. O'Rourke

America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God. Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you've got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags.

P. J. O'Rourke

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Men love a joke - on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself.

Mark Twain

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

Mark Twain

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind-the humorous.

Mark Twain

I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.

Mark Twain

But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery - go!

Mark Twain

... all the modern inconveniences ...