Will Rogers

Live so that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
– Will Rogers

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
– Will Rogers

The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress
meets.
– Will Rogers

Diplomacy is the art of saying “nice doggie” until you can find a rock.
– Will Rogers

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.
– Will Rogers

We don’t seem able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?
– Will Rogers

Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.
– Will Rogers

If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?
– Will Rogers

When newspapers knock a man a lot, there is sure to be a lot of good in him.
– Will Rogers

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you
are doing. And believe in what you are doing.
– Will Rogers

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
– Will Rogers

The minute you read something that you can’t understand, you can almost be sure that it
was drawn up by a lawyer.
– Will Rogers

The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so that’s the problem.
– Will Rogers

Confucius perspired out more knowledge than the U. S. Senate has vocalized out in the last
50 years.
– Will Rogers

Every war has been preceded by a peace conference. That’s what always starts the next
war.
– Will Rogers

Always drink upstream from the herd.
– Will Rogers

A fool and his money are soon elected.
– Will Rogers

The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
– Will Rogers

They want peace. But they want a gun to get it with.
– Will Rogers

There are three kinds of men: The ones that learns by reading. The few who learn by
observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
– Will Rogers

No man can be condemned for owning a dog. As long as he’s got a dog he’s got a friend and
the poorer he gets the better friend he has.
– Will Rogers

Plans get you into things but you’ve got to work your way out.
– Will Rogers

Popularity is the easiest thing in the world to gain and it is the hardest thing to hold.
– Will Rogers

Every nation must have its legalized form of gambling. We have our Wall Street.
– Will Rogers

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.
– Will Rogers

Trouble with American transportation is that you can get somewhere quicker than you can
think of a reason for going there. What we need now is a new excuse to go somewhere.
– Will Rogers

When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, “I never took a human life, I only
sold the fellow the gun to take it with.”
– Will Rogers

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something
they don’t need.
– Will Rogers

We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that’s overfilled with everything we
want.
– Will Rogers

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

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than
the other.
– Will Rogers

Common sense ain’t common.
– Will Rogers

We all can’t be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
– Will Rogers

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
– Will Rogers

Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can’t ask
his patients what is the matter – he’s got to just know.
– Will Rogers

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.
– Will Rogers

I hope some of the men who get the most votes will be elected.
– Will Rogers

More men have been elected between sundown and sunup, than ever were elected between
sunup and sundown.
– Will Rogers

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.
– Will Rogers

The American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with
the possible exception of stupidity.
– Will Rogers

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United
States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
– Will Rogers

Letting the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back.
– Will Rogers

George Washington was a politician and a gentleman. That’s a rare combination.
– Will Rogers

Everybody is excited over who will win the election in Chicago. The side with the most
machine guns will win it.
– Will Rogers

The crime of taxation is not in the taking of it, it’s in the way that it’s spent.
– Will Rogers

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both
a Senate and a House?
– Will Rogers

I doubt if a charging elephant, or a rhino, is as determined or hard to check as a socially
ambitious mother.
– Will Rogers

Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.
– Will Rogers

Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today
it’s called golf.
– Will Rogers

Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging
about it.
– Will Rogers

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
– Will Rogers

There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.
– Will Rogers

I’m offended by political jokes. Too often they get elected.
– Will Rogers

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress
people they don’t like.
– Will Rogers

You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on
people.
– Will Rogers

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.
– Will Rogers

Indians and primitive races were the highest civilized because they were more satisfied and
they depended less on each other and took less from each other.
– Will Rogers

Politics ain’t worrying this country one tenth as much as parking space.
– Will Rogers

Put a good tax on beer and that would take care of the unemployment fund.
– Will Rogers

History ain’t what it is. It’s what some writer wanted it to be.
– Will Rogers

The Republican platform promises to do better. I don’t think they have done so bad.
Everybody’s broke but them.
– Will Rogers

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
– Will Rogers

Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on
advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise it.
– Will Rogers

Nations are just like individuals. Loan them money and you lose their friendship.
– Will Rogers

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government
we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.
– Will Rogers

Government investigations have always contributed more to our amusement than they have to
our knowledge.
– Will Rogers

I can remember when a man could be considered respectable without belonging to a golf
club.
– Will Rogers

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
– Will Rogers

I am not a member of any organized party – I am a Democrat.
– Will Rogers

This would be a great world to dance in if we didn’t have to pay the fiddler.
– Will Rogers

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.” I am so
proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave
you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.
– Will Rogers

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them
laugh.
– Will Rogers

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.
– Will Rogers

Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.
– Will Rogers

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
– Will Rogers

The platform will always be the same, promise everything, deliver nothing.
– Will Rogers

You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new
way.
– Will Rogers

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
– Will Rogers

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

We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can.
Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.
– Will Rogers

We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poor house in an automobile.
– Will Rogers

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.
– Will Rogers

Communism is like prohibition, it’s a good idea but it won’t work.
– Will Rogers

Democrats take the whole thing as a joke. Republicans take it serious but run it like a joke.
– Will Rogers

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
– Will Rogers

We shouldn’t elect a President. We should elect a magician.
– Will Rogers

Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.
– Will Rogers

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

A man in the country does his own thinking. Get him into town and he will be thinking
second-handed.
– Will Rogers

And kid Congress and the Senate, don’t scold them. They are just children thats never grown
up. They don’t like to be corrected in company. Don’t send messages to them, send candy.
– Will Rogers

One way to solve all the traffic problems would be to keep all the cars that aren’t paid for off
the streets.
– Will Rogers

If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can’t get us out?
– Will Rogers

If you feel the urge, don’t be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild
geese are for anyway?
– Will Rogers

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
showdown.
– Will Rogers

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.
– Will Rogers

Republicans want a man that can lend dignity to the office. Democrats want a man that will
lend some money.
– Will Rogers

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

The difference between a bandit and a patriot is a good press agent.
– Will Rogers