“The "Ways & Means Committee" is a committee that's supposed to find the Ways to divide up the Means.”

“If you want to be successful, love what you are doing.”

“If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest barometer in the world.”

“We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”

“The budget is like a mythical bean bag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, then reaches in and tries to pull real ones out.”

“And the more pity that great folk should have count'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christen.”

“Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.”

“In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.”

“It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”

“We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.”

“Never let a good crisis go to waste”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

“And makes me poor indeed.”

“Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor”

“Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary”

“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.”

“When Caesar says, 'Do this', it is performed.”

“Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur. There thou mightst behold the great image of authority-a dog's obeyed in office.”

“Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.”

“If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world. This is becoming the richest, and the poorest Country in the world. Why? Why, on account of an unequal distribution of the money.”

“When I was in high school if you were black and lived in Detroit, and you wanted to drive down to Florida to go on vacation, you had to plan to drive all the way through, because you couldn't stop in a hotel all the way through South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. We can't even fathom such a thing now, can we?”

“Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets, but gold that's put to use more gold begets.”

“I am wealthy in my friends.”

“If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.”