Will Rogers Quotes

• If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.
• Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.
• You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
• Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.
• I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn't like.
• We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory.
• You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
• Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
• A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.
• I not only 'don't choose to run' but I don't even want to leave a loophole in case I am drafted, so I won't 'choose'. I will say 'won't run' no matter how bad the country will need a comedian by that time.
• Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.
• This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.
• And kid Congress and the Senate, dont scold em. They are just children thats never grown up. They dont like to be corrected in company. Dont send messages to em, send candy.
• I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.
• You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.
• We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.
• The United States never lost a war or won a conference.
• We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poor house in an automobile.
• Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.
• When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you've got to have been looking for it.
• Sure must be a great consolation to the poor people who lost their stock in the late crash to know that it has fallen in the hands of Mr. Rockefeller, who will take care of it and see it has a good home and never be allowed to wander around unprotected again. There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.
• The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
• The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
• We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
• Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter - he's got to just know.
• This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to pay the fiddler.
• An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.
• This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
• The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.
• We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.
• This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
• An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
• We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.
• There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. QOTD 2007�11�04 Sound file
• Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
• Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
• What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
• Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
• Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
• Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.
• The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.
• Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.
• When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, 'I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.'
• The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
• I tell you Folks, all Politics is Apple Sauce.
• The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.
• Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
• Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.
• I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat.
• The American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.
• Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. ... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.
• We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
• A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him.
• So when all the yielding and objections is over, the other Senator said, 'I object to the remarks of a professional joker being put into the Congressional Record.' Taking a dig at me, see? They didn't want any outside fellow contributing. Well, he had me wrong. Compared to them I'm an amateur, and the thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress - every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke.
• I am not a member of any organized party - I am a Democrat.
• There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don't even have to exaggerate.
• There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.
• Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.
• You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
• 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.
• Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.
• When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: 'I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.' I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.
• I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.
• Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.
• Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there.
• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
• I am a peace man. I haven't got any use for wars and there is no more humor in 'em than there is reason for 'em.
• I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.
• I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to run their own business.
• I got a telegram from Amarillo, Texas, and they want me to say something about mothers-in-law. They say thay are having a mother-in-law day. I had a wonderful mother-in-law, and I always felt - after looking at mothers-in-law and seeing sons-in-law - I always felt that the jokes were on the wrong ones. No sir, you can look through everything I ever did write or say, and you never did hear me tell a joke about any mother-in-law, or any creed, color or religion, either.
• I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.
• I represent a new class of people in this country, the newly poor.
• I tell you, this finding out how to govern a country, or even a state, or county, or even town, has got the whole world licked. There is not a type of government that can point with complete pride and say: There, this is the best that can be had!
• I was not a child prodigy, because a child prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.
• I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.
• If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
• It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.
• Just put me in a place where I can watch Congress spend my money.
• Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
• Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
• Live your life so that whenever you lose, you're ahead.
• My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met 'em at the boat.
• My idea of an honest man is a fellow who declares income tax on money he sold his vote for.
• No man is great if he thinks he is.
• No nation ever had two better friends that we have. You know who they are? The Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
• Nothing you can't spell will ever work.
• On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
• Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
• People are marvelous in their generosity if they just know the cause is there.
• Somebody is always telling us in the paper how to prevent war. There is only one way in the world to prevent war and that is for every nation to tend to its own business. Trace any war and you will find some nation was trying to tell some other nation how to run their business. All these nations are interfering with some other nation's personal affairs but with an eye to business. Why don't we let the rest of the world act like it wants to.
• A Democrat never adjourns--he is born, becomes of voting age and starts right in arguing over something, and his political adjournment is his date with the undertaker.
• The Democrats ran on 'Honesty' and I told 'em at the time they would never get anywhere. It was too radical for politics. The Republicans ran on 'Common Sense' and the returns showed that there were 8 million more people in the United States who had 'Common Sense' enough not to believe that there was 'Honesty' in politics.
• When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence levels in both states.
• Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.

will rogers