Will Rogers Quotations

Will Rogers

A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you.

Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom.

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion.

Campaigns have ruined more men than they ever made.

Communism is like prohibition, it is a good idea, but it won't work.

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

Did you ever know a politician that was not 'facing the most critical time in the world's affairs' every time he spoke in public?

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.

Education never helped morals. The smarter the guy, the bigger the rascal.

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.

Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

I can remember way back when a liberal was one who was generous with his own money.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer.

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody 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.

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.

I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do now.

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get 'em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay 'em.

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.

I thought yesterday when you heard all this unnecessary spouting about each man nominated, what their wives must have thought of all these men that they were married to all these years, and were just finding out how wonderful they were.

I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.

I wonder if it isn't just cowardice instead of generosity that makes us give tips.

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back.

Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

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.

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.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails? (to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo)

Shrewdness in public life all over the world is always honored, while honesty in public men is generally attributed to dumbness and is seldom rewarded.

So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

That's what a Congressman or Senator is for -- to see that too much money don't accumulate in the national Treasury.

The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.

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.

The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

The French couldn't hate us any more unless we helped 'em out in another war.

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know, when it's through, if you are a crook or a martyr.

The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.

The minute you read something you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was written by lawyers.

The more you read about politics, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

The nation is prosperous on the whole, but how much prosperity is there in a hole?

The person with the best job in the country is the vice president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, 'How is the president?'

There are a hundred things to single you out for promotion in party politics besides ability.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family. But he can't make a living for them *and* his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.

There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

These politicians, when they can't make politics pay, can always fall back on -- the honorable practice of law.

The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls will.

The Supreme Court is divided almost in half on the decisions. Talk about an international court. How would we ever agree with a lot of foreigners when we can't even agree among our own judges?

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

They are voting whether to keep a governor two years or four. I think a good, honest governor should get four years, and the others life.

Things will get better -- despite our efforts to improve them.

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

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.

Two lawyers can make a scandal out of anything they have anything to do with. One hundred will bring a revolution.

We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

Well, the disarmament conference is off to a flying start. There is nothing to prevent their succeeding now but human nature.

When everybody has got money they cut taxes, and when they're broke they raise 'em. That's statesmanship of the highest order.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do -- that's Memoirs.

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke.

You see, medical science has developed two ways of actually determining insanity. One is if the patient cuts out paper dolls, and the other is if the patient says: I will tell you what this economic business really means.