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.

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

Never fight an inanimate object.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's a promissory note that doesn't actually promise anything. It's not backed by gold or silver.

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren't there.

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don't count modern civilization.

If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.

Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.

Bill Clinton is not a hypocrite. If a man believes that it is just and moral to redistribute wealth, there is nothing hypocritical in his attempts to redistribute some of that wealth to himself.

Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in the valley of the River Exe would be gone. The handsome agricultural landscape of which the British are so proud, carefully husbanded since Boudicca's day, would be replaced by natural growth. The most likely growth is real-estate developments.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

Globalization is simply opening the free marketplace to encompass the entire world.

The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.

Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

A penny will not buy a penny postcard or a penny whistle or a single piece of penny candy. It will not even, if you're managing the U.S. Mint, buy a penny.

Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-workers and so on, but actually hate the job they do.

Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage.

I live in New Hampshire. We're in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level rises? I've got beachfront property. You tell us up there, 'By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,' and we say, 'Your point is?'