A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.
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A man's eroticism is a woman's sexuality.
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A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation.
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A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
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Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life.
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An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.
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Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
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Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
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Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.
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Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
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Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
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Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.
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Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.
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Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.
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He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.
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How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
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How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
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If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
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Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.
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It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
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Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.
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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
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Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
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Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.
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My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.
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News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. ClichTs walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off.
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Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy.
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Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
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Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.
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The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.
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The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.
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The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.
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The press, that goiter of the world, swells up with the desire for conquest and bursts with the achievements which every day brings. A week has room for the boldest climax of the human drive for expansion.
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The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.
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This is something that I cannot get over - that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.
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War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
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War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.
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