Old Quotes for New Times

Will Rogers
Will Rogers is the author of "I have never met a man I don't like." If you don't know history, this guy was NOT a politician, but he had a lot to say about them. He also knew and understood the American people. He was their voice during the Great Depression. Here are several of his quotes that still apply to today's world:

• A fool and his money are soon elected.


• Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.


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


• Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.


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


• Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?


• An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.


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


• America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.


• All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.


• Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.


• About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.


• A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.


• Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.


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


• Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.


• Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.


• Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.


• Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.


• Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else.


• I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.


• I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him "father."


• I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this - no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.


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


• The best way out of a difficulty is through it.


• The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.


• The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can't make anybody believe that he has it.


• The man 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?"


• The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.


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


• The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.


• The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.


• The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn't go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he's got.


• There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.


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


• There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.


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


• Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.


• What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.


• Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.


• You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.

That's a tough act to follow!