Will Rogers Quotes

“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.”

“Ignorance lies not in the things you don't know, but in the things you know that ain't so.”

“You've got to be (an) optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one”

“Just been talking today out here to all the Senators investigating these stock swindles and overcapitalizations. There has been hundreds of millions lost. There ought to be some form of guardianship for people that buy all this junk. Education won't do it. The buyers are the ones we have educated up till they are just smart enough to fall for everything that comes along.”

“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.”

“What would we say if the Chinese sent a gunboat with their marines up the Mississippi River claiming they were protecting their laundries in Memphis?”

“Land taxes is the thing. They got so high that there is no chance to make anything. Not only land but all property tax. You see in the old days, why the only thing they knew how to tax was land, or a house. Well, that condition went along for quite awhile, so even today the whole country tries to run its revenue on taxes on land. They never ask if the land makes anything. "It's land ain't it? Well tax it then."”

“You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.”

“The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.”

“You know you've got to exercise your brain just like your muscles.”

“The stock market has spoiled more appetites than bad cooking.”

“If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.”

“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”

“They call it the Latin Quarter because nobody there is Latin and nobody has a quarter.”

“It looks to me like any man that wants to be President in times like these lacks something.”

“We are the only nation in the world that waits till we get into a war before we start getting ready for it.”

“The US is safest when Congress is in recess.”

“There is some talk of lowering (the income tax), and they will have to. People are not making enough to pay it.”

“Funny to watch these Senators switching back and forth on Prohibition. Politics is a great character builder. You have to take a referendum to see what your convictions are for that day.”

“I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've ever said, and I used it in the follies of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.”

“When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.”

“Samuel Gompers has spent his life trying to keep labor from working too hard and has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.”

“It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of.”

“We may elevate ourselves but we should never reach so high that we would every forget those who helped us get there.”

“People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible”

“Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.”

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.”

“Course, that's the trouble with politics, it breeds politics! So that makes it pretty hard to stamp out.”

“Just because it's common sense, doesn't mean it's common practice.”

“Women are not the weak, frail little flowers that they are advertised. There has never been anything invented yet, including war, that a man would enter into, that a woman wouldn't, too.”

“There is an awful lot of difference between reading something and actually seeing it, for you can never tell, till you see it, just how big a liar History is.”

“President Coolidge said, 'I don't want the Government to go into business.' Well, if I was Mr. Coolidge I wouldn't worry over that. The Government never has been accused of being a business man.”

“This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.”

“I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.”

“You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years.”

“I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you.”

“A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.”

“We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?”

“The good old horse-and-buggy days: then you lived until you died and not until you were run over.”

“When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like."”

“Your mothers get mighty shocked at you girls nowadays, but in her day, her mother was just on the verge of sending her to reform school.”

“A fool and his money are soon elected.”

“Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.”

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?”

“There is nothing that sets a nation back as far in civilization as prosperity.”

“If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership.”