Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but, oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

I’m odd looking. Sometimes I think I look like a funny muppet.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

A Jewish woman had two chickens. One got sick, so the woman made chicken soup out of the other one to help the sick one get well.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.