“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.”

“If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.”

“I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely erro...”

“If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.”

“Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.”

“Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.”

“God can use the jawbone of an ass!”

“Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.”

“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. ...”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.”

“I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.”

“MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?TITUS ANDRONICUS: Ha, ha, ha!MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour.TITUS ANDRONICUS: Why, I have not anoth...”