Subject: Philosophy, American Style
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 07:38:15 -0400

Thanks to Chris Connell for these jewels of wisdom from two great
American Philosophers...
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                               * WILL ROGERS *

"The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit
 that each party is worse than the other.  The one that's out always looks
 the best."

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else."

"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we 
 have rushed through life trying to save."

"See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?"
 to his niece on seeing the Venus DE Milo.

"Even if you"re on the right track, you'll get run over if you just
 sit there."

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."

"I'm not a real movie star.  I've still got the same wife I started out
 with twenty-eight years ago."

"Politics is applesauce."

"This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as
 when the baby gets hold of a hammer."

"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
 nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
 what it does."

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

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice dogie until you can find a rock."

"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap
 as they go by."


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                                * MARK TWAIN *

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a
 good example."

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining,
 but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

"Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence
 on society."

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you
 nothing. It was here first."

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as
 you please."

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves
 and how little we think of the other person."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
 you.  This is the principle difference between a dog and a man."

"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did
 succeed in making those idiots understand their language."

"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good
 library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. 
 But I repeat myself."

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress."

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities.  Truth isn't."

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody 
 has read."

"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels.  If a man should challenge me, I would
 take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place
 and kill him."

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."

"There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale
 returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly.  I said I don't know."

"In the first place, God made idiots.  That was for practice.  Then he made
 school boards."

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that 
 I approved of it."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
 difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"It is easier to stay out than get out."

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