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No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestim...more

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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucina...more

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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

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When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact t...more

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Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schem...more

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It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own...more

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A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

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In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. Thi...more

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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

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One cannot enter a State legislature or a prison for felons without becoming, in some measure, a dubious character.

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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristoc...more

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most...more

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Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole ai...more