Last winter I was using this Will Rogers quote as my sig line "Those old Wall Street boys are putting up an awful fight to keep the government from putting a cop on their corner." I wanted to see what else the famous humorist said for a new sig line. I found so many gems I decided to make a diary out of it.
General
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated on.
We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.
We should never reach so high that we would ever forget those who helped us get there.
Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.
Class Warfare
The difference between our rich and poor grows greater every year. Our distribution of wealth is getting more uneven all the time. A man can make a million and he is on every page in the morning. But it never tells you who gave up that million he got. You can’t get money without taking it from somebody.
Ten men in the country could buy the world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.
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.
A conservative is a man who has plenty of money and doesn’t see any reason why he should always have plenty of money. A Democrat is a fellow who never had any money but doesn’t see why he shouldn’t.
There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.
People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.
We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.
It’s a great country but you can’t live in it for nothing.
I think the same fellow who started that self-made man gag started that other asinine expression, “100 per cent American.” Every human from the time he is weaned is self-made. And how do you know when a man is made anyhow? He may be only partly finished when a lot of guys call him made.
Wall Street
Every nation must have its legalized form of gambling. We have our Wall Street.
If Wall Street paid a tax on every “game” they run, we would get enough revenue to run the government on.
I guess there is no two races of people in worse repute with everybody than the international bankers and the folks that put all those pins in new shirts.
Our whole Depression was brought on by gambling, not in the stock market alone but in expanding and borrowing and going in debt, all just to make some money quick.
See where Congress passed a two Billion dollar bill to relieve bankers' mistakes. You can always count on us helping those who have lost part of their fortune, but our whole history records nary a case where the loan was for the man who had absolutely nothing.
Wall Street is being investigated, but they are not asleep while it's being done. You see where the Senate took that tax off the sales of stocks, didn't you? Saved 'em $48,000,000. Now, why don't somebody investigate the Senate and see who got to them to get that tax removed? That would be a real investigation.
Politics
Be a Politician—no training necessary.
A President-elect’s popularity is the shortest lived of any public man. It only lasts till he picks his Cabinet
The more I see of politics...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.
The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.
Remember, write to your Congressman. Even if he can’t read, write to him.
Sometimes it makes you think we don’t need a different man as much as we need different advisors for the same man.
A politician is just like a pickpocket. It’s almost impossible to get one to reform.
Ain’t it funny how many hundreds of thousands of soldiers we can recruit with nerve. But we can’t find one politician in a million with backbone.
There is people so excited over this election that they think the President has something to do with running this country.
There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
And kid Congress and the Senate, don't scold 'em. They are just children thats never grown up. They don't like to be corrected in company. Don't send messages to 'em, send candy.
In this country people don’t vote for, they vote against.
There is very little dignity, very little sportsmanship, or very little anything in politics only get the job and hold it.
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.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
We shouldn’t elect a President. We should elect a magician.
Democrats
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.
A flock of Democrats will replace a mess of Republicans. 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
A cannibal is a good deal like a Democrat, they are forced to live off each other.
Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.
Republicans
Republicans take care of big money, for big money takes care of them.
The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes.
The Republican platform promises to do better. I don’t think they have done so bad. Everybody’s broke but them.
The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.
There ain’t any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.
Contrasting the Parties
Republicans have always been the party of big business. The Democrats of small business. So you just take your pick. The Democrats have their eye on a dime and the Republicans on a dollar.
Democrats take the whole thing as a joke. Republicans take it serious but run it like a joke.
It takes nerve to be a Democrat, but it takes money to be a Republican.
Corruption in Government
A fool and his money are soon elected.
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.
It must be nice to belong to some legislative body and just pick money out of the air.
The United States Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.
A lobbyist is a person that is supposed to help a politician make up his mind—not only help him but pay him.
War
Well, they finally stopped us from sending marines to every war that we could hear of. They are having one in Afghanistan. The thing will be over before Congress can pronounce it, much less find out where it is located.
When you get into trouble five thousand miles from home you’ve got to have been looking for it.
Draft capital as well as men. Boys, there ain’t going to be no war.
The difference between a bandit and a patriot is a good press agent.
Woe be to a weak nation if they live by a strong one.
When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.
Here we go again! America is running true to form, fixing some other country’s business for ’em just as we always do. We mean well, but will wind up in wrong as usual.
Rogers was born in 1879 near Oologah in the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma).The son of a a Cherokee judge, he was named after the Cherokee leader Colonel William Penn Adair.
Sources:
Quotes of Will Rogers
Will Rogers on Business
qotd.org