Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Politically there were failures. And also on the personal level, there were tremendous failures.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

I have always hated bowling, and I don’t mind admitting it.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Trying to be fascinating is an asinine position to be in.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

I hated the Naked Chef. Fine, yes, he did good things for school food or whatever, but, you know, I don’t want my chefs to be cute and adorable.

I just don’t like mutual funds. I think they’re a rip-off.

Let’s be honest. Canada wasn’t ever cool.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

There is no gambling like politics.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn’t happen 20 years ago.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

I just didn’t want to get out there anymore; I didn’t want to get back into what I call ‚the swamp.‘ And the other reason why is I don’t think it’s good for the presidency for a former president to be opining about his successor. President Obama’s got plenty of critics – and I’m just not gonna be one.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

I’m one of those people who says, ‚yes, cinema died when they invented sound.‘