July 4, 1927 – “I was born on Nov. 4, which is election day... My birthday has made more men and sent more back to honest work than any other days in the year.”
 
March 4, 1935 - “There is one thing in common with all revolutions (in fact they are pretty near like wars in that respect) nobody ever knows what they are fighting about.”
 
May 26, 1929 - “You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in one protecting your own home.”
 
July 1, 1931 – “America is a land of opportunity and don’t ever forget it.”
 
October 4, 1925 – “A Man only learns by two things, one is reading, and the other is association with smarter people.
 
August 16, 1931 – “Ten men in the country could buy the world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.”
 
September 6, 1928 – “We don’t have to worry about anything. No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go and buy it on credit.”
 
September 21, 1931 – “This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
 
November 18, 1923 – “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”
 
May 11, 1930 – “Mothers are the only race of people that speak the same tongue. A mother in Manchuria could converse with a mother in Nebraska and never miss a word.”
 
1929 – “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”
 
September 11, 1932 – “Villains are getting as thick as college degrees and sometimes on the same fellow.”
 
February 9, 1930 – “They want peace. But they want a gun to get it with.”
 
August 17, 1924 – “A man that don’t love a horse, there is something the matter with him.”
 
July 5, 1931 – “There ain’t nothing to life but satisfaction.”
 
March 1, 1929 – “No man is great if he thinks he is.”
 
May 15, 1928 – “I maintain that it should cost as much to get married as it does to get divorced. Make it look like marriage is worth as much as divorce, even if it ain’t. That would also make the preachers financially independent like it has the lawyers.”
 
May 26, 1935 – “Remember, write to your Congressman. Even if he can’t read, write to him.”
 
June 1, 1930 – “You got to sorter give and take in this old world.”
 
July 29, 1928 – “For that's all there is to success is satisfaction.”
 
Jun. 29, 1930 – “I never met a man I didn’t like.”
 
May 26, 1930 – “We shouldn’t elect a President. We should elect a magician.”
 
January 4, 1925 – “Why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as Prohibition did, in five years we will have the smartest people on earth.”
 
November 15, 1925 – “I am no believer in this “hard work, perseverance, and taking advantage of your opportunities” that these Magazines are so fond of writing some fellow up in. The successful don’t work any harder than the failures. They get what is called in baseball the breaks.”

March 13, 1933 – “Some people spend a lifetime juggling with words, with not an idea in a carload.”
 
December 1, 1929  - “This country is bigger than Wall Street. If they don’t believe it, show ’em the map.”
 
August 9, 1925 – “What constitutes a life well spent, anyway? Love and admiration from your fellow men is all that any one can ask.”
 
August 31, 1924 – “I am just an old country boy in a big town trying to get along. I have been eating pretty regular and the reason I have been is because I have stayed an old country boy.”
 
March 15, 1933 – “America can carry herself and get along in pretty fair shape, but when she stops and picks up the whole world and puts it on her shoulders she just can’t ‘get it done.’”
 
January 6, 1931 – “Let this country get hungry and they are going to eat, no matter what happens to budgets, income taxes or Wall Street. Washington mustn’t forget who rules when it comes to a show down.”
 
April 1, 1935 - “We elect our Presidents, be they Republican or Democrat, then start daring ’em to make good.”
 
February 10, 1929 – “It takes nerve to be a Democrat, but it takes money to be a Republican.”
 
April 15, 1923- “When newspapers knock a man a lot, there is sure to be a lot of good in him.”
 
August 14, 1930 – “There ought to be a law against anybody going to Europe until they had seen the things we have in this country.”
 
June 28, 1925 – “Somebody is always telling us in the papers how to prevent war. There is only one way in the World to prevent war, and that is, FOR EVERY NATION TO TEND TO ITS OWN BUSINESS.”
 
July 5, 1931 – “Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.”
 
June 29, 1924 – “The Republican platform promises to do better. I don’t think they have done so bad. Everybody’s broke but them.”
 
September 25. 1932 – “Democrats take the whole thing as a joke. Republicans take it serious but run it like a joke.”
 
November 2, 1924 – “I will admit it has rained more under Republican administrations. That was partially because they have had more administration than Democrats.”
 
July 8, 1928 – “The platform will always be the same, promise everything, deliver nothing.”
 
April 14, 1929 –“A cannibal is a good deal like a Democrat, they are forced to live off each other.”
 
November 11, 1923 – “I have not aligned myself with any party. I am just sitting tight waiting for an attractive offer.”

 
November 9, 1924 – “I generally give the party in power, whether Republican or Demo-crat, the more digs because they are generally doing the country more damage, and besides I don’t think it is fair to jump too much on the fellow who is down. He is not working, he is only living in hopes of getting back in on the graft in another four years, while the party in power is drawing a salary to be knocked.”

November 9, 1924 – “I hope some of the men who get the most votes will be elected.”
 
September 14, 1930 – “Well the elections will be breaking out pretty soon, and a flock of Democrats will replace a mess of Republicans in quite a few districts. It won’t mean a thing, they will go in like all the rest of ’em, go in on promises and come out on Alibis.”

 
November 16, 1924 - The Republicans mopped up, the Democrats gummed up, and I will now try and sum up. Things are terribly dull now. We won’t have any more serious comedy until Congress meets.
 
December 31, 1922 – “You know 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.”

June 10, 1923 – “It’s getting so if a man wants to stand well socially he can’t afford to be seen with either the Democrats or the Republicans.”
 
July 11, 1930 – “The Republicans want a man that will lend dignity to the office, and the Democrats want a man that will lend some money.”

 

April 22, 1928  - “The Republicans have always been the party of big business, and the Democrats of small business, so you just take your pick. The Democrats had their eye on a dime, and the Republicans on a dollar.”
 
November 1, 1932 - “If by some divine act of providence we could get rid of both these parties and hired some good men, like any other big business does, why that would be sitting pretty.”

 
May 1, 1926 – “Both parties have their good and bad times, only they have them at different times. They are good when they are out, and each bad when they are in.”
 
June 2, 1935 – “You could keep politics clean if you could figure out some way where your government never hired anybody.”

October 26, 1924 – “No mathematician in this country has ever been able to figure out how many hundred straw votes it takes to equal one legitimate vote.”
 
March 30, 1929 “There is one thing about a Democrat: He would rather make a Speech than a Dollar.”
 
February 27, 1931 - The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes.
 
August 21, 1932 – “Sometimes it makes you think we don’t need a different man as bad as we need different advisers for the same man.”

 
June 8, 1924 – “If we could just send the same bunch of men to Washington for the good of the nation and not for political reasons, we could have the most perfect government in the world.”
 
December 27, 1931 – “I guess the truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that could happen to you.”
 
June 10, 1923- “More men have been elected between sundown and sunup, than ever were elected between sunup and sundown.”
 
January 2, 1924 – “Politics ain’t worrying this country one tenth as much as parking space.”
 
March 25, 1923 – “But a politician is just like a pickpocket; it’s almost impossible to get one to reform.”
 
March 29, 1925 – “Party Politics is the most narrow minded occupation in the World.”
 
July 15, 1923 – “If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.”
 
February 18, 1929 – “Ain’t it funny how many hundreds of thousands of soldiers we can recruit with nerve. But we just can’t find one politician in a million with backbone.”

June 8, 1924 – “Most people and actors appearing on the stage have some writer to write their material. . . . Congress is good enough for me. They have been writing my material for years.”
 
April 12, 1925 – “Why sleep at home when you can sleep in Congress?”
 
April 12, 1925 – Be a Politician—no training necessary.
 
April 12, 1925 – It is easier to fool ’em in Washington than at home, So why not be a Senator.
 
April 12, 1925 – Get in the cabinet; you won’t have to stay long.
 
April 12, 1925 – Be a Republican and sooner or later you will be a Postmaster.
 
June 2, 1935 – “You know how Congress is. They’ll vote for anything if the thing they vote for will turn around and vote for them.”
 
January 27, 1924 – “Washington, D. C. papers say: “Congress is deadlocked and can’t act.” I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.”
 
March 18, 1930 – “I joke about our prominent men but at heart I believe in ’em. I do think there is times when traces of  ‘dumbness’ crop up in official life, but not crookedness.”
 
May 3, 1925 – “One seldom ever remembers meeting a Vice-President.”
 
May 10, 1925 – “Elections are a good deal like marriages, there’s no accounting for anyone’s taste.”

April 22, 1928 – “It's awful hard to get people interested in corruption unless they can get some of it.”
 
April 22, 1928 – “It’s going to be awful hard to make an issue of Corruption. It’s like the poor, it’s always been with us.”

April 7, 1935  - “Well, we cuss the lawmakers . . . but I notice we’re always perfectly willin’ to share in any of the sums of money that they might distribute.”
 
February 17, 1931 – “Everybody nowadays is suggesting ways of getting prosperous on somebody else’s money.”

 
October 10, 1930 – “Being serious, or being a good fellow has got nothing to do with running this country, if the breaks are with you, you could be a laughing hyena and still have a great administration.”
 
October 30, 1932 – “There is people so excited over this election that they think the President has something to do with running this country.”

May 5, 1923 – “If I was a President and wanted something I would claim I didn’t want it. Congress has not given any President anything he wanted in the last 10 years. Be against anything and then he is sure to get it.”
 
October 29, 1927 – “Politics is the only sporting event in the world where they don’t pay off for second money; a man to run second in any other event in the world it’s an honor. But any time he runs second for President it’s not an honor. It’s a pity.”
 
November 6, 1932 – “A president should hold office six years, with no re-election. Stop this thing of a president having to lower his dignity and go trooping around asking for votes to keep him there another term. Six years give him time to do something. . . . Then pay the man when he goes out one-half of his salary for life.”

February 10, 1924 – “Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate Committee appointed to look into it.”
 
March 2, 1924 – “They ought to pass a rule in this country in any investigations if a man can’t tell the truth the first time he shouldn’t be allowed to try again.”
 
November 4, 1930 – “Just raid the national treasury enough and you will soon be referred to as a ‘statesman.’”
 
January 5, 1931 – “After a football game in Lima, Peru, five were killed. . . . Up here we don’t kill our football players. We make coaches out of the smart ones and send the others to the Legislature.”

 
October 28, 1927 – “The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody that is sober enough to stagger to the polls will.”

March 30, 1929 - “The more education he gets the less apt he is to be a Democrat, and if he is very highly educated he will see the Apple Sauce in both parties.”

July 5, 1931 – “Confucius perspired out more knowledge than the U. S. Senate has vocalized out in the last 50 years.”
 
June 4, 1934 – “Farmers are learning that the relief they get from the sky beats what they get from Washington.”

July 8, 1928 – “None of them from any party are going to purposely ruin the country. They will all do the best they can.”
 
November 1, 1932 – “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.”
 
December 4, 1926 - “People don’t change under Governments; the Governments change, but the people remain the same.”

November 7, 1932 – “One of the evils of democracy is you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not. That's why we call it democracy.”

September 12, 1926 – “Every Guy just looks in his pockets and then votes.”

April 7, 1930 – “The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”
 
March 22, 1935- “…once a man wants to hold a Public Office, he is absolutely no good for honest work.”
 
December 25, 1932 – “Always remember this, that as bad as we sometimes think our government is run, it’s the best run I ever saw.”

November 1, 1932 – “The high office of President of the United States has degenerated into two ordinarily fine men being goaded by political leeches into saying things that if they were in their right minds they wouldn’t think of saying.”
 
June 9, 1935 – “In this country . . . people don’t vote for; they vote against.”

July 5, 1935 - "A statesman is a man that can do what a politician would like to do but can't, because he is afraid of not being elected."
 
November 3, 1932 – “But, after all, there there is very little dignity, very little sportsmanship, or very little anything in politics only get the job and hold it.”
 
February 22, 1925 – “When an Office Holder, or one that has been found out, can’t think of anything to deliver a speech on, he always falls back on the good old subject, AMERICANISM.”
 
March 31, 1935 – “There’s nothing will upset a state economic condition like a legislature. It’s better to have termites in your house than the legislature.”
 
November 22, 1929 – “Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. It’s when they do something is when they get dangerous.”
 
March 27, 1932 – “Lord, the money we do spend on government. And it’s not a bit better government that we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”

 

June 2, 1928 – “You know yourself that about all there is to Politics is trading anyway. That why Politics is not as good as it was years ago is because they don't have as many old-time horse traders in there. These we got now are just Amateurs. They are crude with their trades. There is really no Finesse--you might not get that; it's a French word and means sneaking it over.”
 
October 5, 1924. – “What this country needs is more working men and fewer politicians.”
 
Unpublished, 1922 – “That’s the trouble with a politician’s life somebody is always interrupting it with an election.”
 
March 1, 1933 – “Imagine a man in public office that everybody knew where he stood. We wouldn’t call him a statesman, we would call him a curiosity.”
 
March 22, 1925 – “There should be a tax on every man that wanted to get a government appointment or be elected to office. In two years that tax alone would pay our National debt.”

​

March 26, 1933 – “A conservative is a man who has plenty of money and doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t always have plenty of money. A Democrat is a fellow who never had any, but doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have some.”

November 11, 1928 – “There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail. They are always yapping about ‘public service.’ It’s public jobs that they are looking for.”
 
August 25, 1929 – “A lobbyist is a person that is supposed to help a politician make up his mind—not only help him but pay him.”
 
May 12, 1935 - “…the highest praise a humorist can have is getting yourself into the Congressional Record. Just - just think, my name will be right in there along side of Huey Long's and all those other big humorists.”
 
August 4, 1929 – “You know I like to make little jokes and kid about the Senators. They are a kind of a never ending source of amusement, amazement, and Discouragement. But the Rascals, when you meet ’em face to face and know ’em, they are mighty nice fellows. It must be something in the office that makes ’em so honery sometimes. When you see what they do officially you want to shoot ’em, but when one looks at you and grins so innocently, why you kinder want to kiss him.

June 23, 1924 – “There is no race of people in the world that can compete with a Senator for talking. Why, if I went to the Senate, I bet I couldn't talk fast enough to answer roll call.”
 
June 21, 1935 - “Funny thing about being a U. S. Senator, the only thing the law says you have to be is 30 years old. Not another single requirement necessary. They just figure that a man that old got nobody to blame but himself if he gets caught in there.”

February 28, 1935 – “It must be marvelous to just belong to some legislative body and just pick money out of the air.”

 
“Democrats, you can’t shame them into even dying. They would keep on living just to spite the Republicans.” - More Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat, 1932
 
October 23, 1928 – “Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.”
 
January 25, 1935, - “Everybody in Washington seems to be apologizing to each other. In Washington they just generally figure that one hatred offsets the other and they are both even.”
 
June 3, 1935 - “These baccalaureate addresses given to graduates don’t offer ’em much encouragement outside of advising ’em to vote the straight Republican ticket.”
 
March 20, 1933 – “This country just civic luncheoned itself into depression. If they will all go home and eat with their own families, they will not only get their first good lunch in years, but will be surprised how much more intelligently their own wife can talk than the “speaker of the day.”
 
December 3, 1933 – “I love a dog, he does nothing for political reasons.”
 
May 9, 1928 - “Tax relief, farm relief, flood relief, dam relief—none of these have been settled, but they are getting them in shape for consideration at the next session of Congress with the hope that those needing relief will perhaps have conveniently died in the meantime.”

December 26, 1928 – “A President-elect’s popularity is the shortest lived of any public man. It only lasts till he picks his Cabinet.”
 
June 28, 1932 – “I have looked politics and the movies both over and, while they have much in common I believe politics is the most common, so I will stay with the movies.”
 
August 17, 1932 – “I have read all Presidential speeches on both sides up to now, and the winner is the man smart enough to not make any more. There is a great chance for a “silent” third party.”
 
August 22, 1932 – “There is not a voter in America that twenty-four hours after any speech was made could remember two sentences in it.”
 
November 30, 1924 – “Shrewdness in Public life all over the World is always honored, while honesty in Public Men is generally attributed to Dumbness and is seldom rewarded.”
 
September 27, 1925 – “The more I see of politics and so-called organization the more I wonder what in the world any man would ever want to take it up for. Then some people wonder why the best men of a community are not the office holders.”
 
July 8, 1928 – “Our Public men take themselves so serious. It just looks like they are stoop-shouldered from carrying our Country on their backs.”
 
April 4, 1927 – “Everybody is excited over who will win the election in Chicago. The side with the most machine guns will win it.”
 
March 15, 1928 – “The Democrats are having a lot of fun exposing the Republican campaign corruptions, but they would have a lot more fun if they knew where they could lay their hands on some of it themselves for next November.”
 
May 7, 1928 – “Been reading Sunday’s casualty lists from automobiles. It looks like everybody gets run over but Presidential candidates. Is there no justice in the world?”
 
September 9, 1928 – “The farmers starve three years out of four but the good year is always election year. It really looks like the Lord was in cahoots with the Republicans, but if He is that would make you almost lose faith in Him.”
 
February 22, 1925 – “No element, no party, not even Congress or the Senate can hurt this country now; it’s too big. …That’s why I can never take a politician seriously.”
 
February 22, 1925 – “Congress can pass a bad law and as long as the Old Normal Majority find it out they have it scratched off the books.”
 
February 22, 1925 – “Even when our next war comes we will through our shortsightedness not be prepared, but that won’t be anything fatal. The real energy and minds of the normal majority will step in and handle it and fight it through to a successful conclusion.”
 

February 22, 1925 – “This country is not where it is today on account of any man. It is here on account of the big normal majority.”

August 19, 1923 – “The town with the cheapest land and most concrete can have the largest stadium.”
 
October 6, 1933 – “For the one way to detect a feeble-minded man is get one arguing on economics.”
 
October 8, 1928 – “So much money is being spent on the campaigns that I doubt if either man, as good as they are, are worth what it will cost to elect them.”
 
September 6, 1928 – “No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is buy it on credit. So that leaves us without any economic problem whatever, except perhaps some day to have to pay for them. But we are certainly not thinking about that this early. Yours for more credit and longer payments.”
 
October 31, 1929 – “There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer.”
 
February 11, 1927 – “One thing about farmers’ relief: It can’t last long, for the farmers ain’t got much more to be relieved of.”
 
October 18, 1931 – “We’ll hold the distinction of being the only Nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.”
 
July 10, 1930  “Don’t make the first payment on anything. First payments is what made us think we were prosperous, and the other nineteen is what showed us we were broke.”
 
March 30, 1929 – “If you got a Business, and it ain't doing so good, why, combine it with another one and issue more stock.”

 
“All this Open-Door stuff is a lot of Hooey. Any Door is only open to those that have the best product at the cheapest money.” Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat, 1926
 
May 26, 1935 - “An economist is a man that can tell you anything about - he'll tell you what can happen under any given conditions, and his guess is liable to be just as good as anybody else's, too.”
 
March 16, 1930 – “Every nation must have its legalized form of gambling. We have our Wall Street.”
 
March 20, 1931 – “If Wall Street paid a tax on every ‘game’ they run, we would get enough revenue to run the government on.”