All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

Part of the problem is there are people in Washington, D.C. in positions of power to whom the border is just a nuisance, and I think some of them believe that illegal immigration is a moral good. It is not. It undermines legal immigration.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

So, I’m lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say, ‚Free at last,‘ and she says ‚You’re free all right, you’re free to do the dishes.‘ So I say, ‚You’re talking to the former president, baby,‘ and she said, ‚consider this your new domestic policy agenda.‘

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

Trash talk? Smack talk? This is an American term that makes me laugh. I simply speak the truth. I’m an Irish man.

I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, period.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There’s really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.