Will Rogers

"Alles ist lustig, solange es jemand Anderem passiert."

"Jeder ist ein Ignorant, nur bei unterschiedlichen Themen."

""Kommunismus ist wie Prohibition"

"Man kann nicht sagen, daß die Zivilisation keine Fortschritte macht. In jedem Krieg töten sie einen auf neue Art."

"Ich mache keine Witze. Ich beobachte nur die Regierung und berichte Tatsachen."

"See they conducted experiments on convicts ... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail ... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there ... It would be a big aid to humanity, it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it ... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run ... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics ... Even the ministers are denouncing it now ... Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony."

"Well, all I know is what I read in the papers."

"Papers say: "Congress is deadlocked and can't act." I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country."

"You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."

"Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is."

"I never met a man I didn't like."

"This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue."

"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.""

"Sure must be a great consolation to the poor people who lost their stock in the late crash to know that it has fallen in the hands of Mr. Rockefeller, who will take care of it and see it has a good home and never be allowed to wander around unprotected again. 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."

"But it's just as Mr. Brisbane and I have been constantly telling you, "Don't gamble"; take all your savings and buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it."

"You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way."

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

"This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to pay the fiddler."

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

"We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want."

"I certainly know that [A] comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious and I don't want either of those to happen to me til I am dead (if then)."

"I not only "don't choose to run" but I don't even want to leave a loophole in case I am drafted, so I won't "choose". I will say "won't run" no matter how bad the country will need a comedian by that time."

"Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with."

"The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living."

"This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something."

"I am a peace man. I haven't got any use for wars and there is no more humor in 'em than there is reason for 'em."

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

"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 have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it."

"There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs."

"Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators."

"We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it."

"No party is as bad as its state and national leaders."

"advertising [...] makes you spend money you haven't got for things you don't want."

"The United States never lost a war or won a conference."

"When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you've got to have been looking for it."

"The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them."

"The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself."

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

"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."

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

"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."

"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."

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. 11px|frameless QOTD 2007·11·04 Sound file"

"Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff."

"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?"

"What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds."

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."

"Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week."

"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."

"Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat."

"The only problem with Boy Scouts is, there aren't enough of them."

"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."

"I tell you Folks, all Politics is Apple Sauce."

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr."

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

"Now 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."

"I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat."

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

"Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. ... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth."

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

"A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him."

"So when all the yielding and objections is over, the other Senator said, "I object to the remarks of a professional joker being put into the Congressional Record." Taking a dig at me, see? They didn't want any outside fellow contributing. Well, he had me wrong. Compared to them I'm an amateur, and the thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress — every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke."

"I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."

"There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don't even have to exaggerate."

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education."

"Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work."

"When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that's Memoirs."

"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."

"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."

"I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every 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."

"I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I dident like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them."

"We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory."

"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. Radio broadcast, Bacon, Beans, and Limousines, October 18, 1931"

"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."

"You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one."

"You've never in your life seen a picture, I bet any one of you, never seen a picture of one of these old Pilgrims praying when they didn't have a gun right by the side of them. That was to see that he got what he was praying for."

"That's one thing about Republican Presidents. They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says "Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can.""

"I am not so much concerned with the return on capital as I am with the return of capital."

"Diplomacy is the art of being able to say "nice doggie" until you have time to pick up a rock!"

"Diplomacy is the same as saying "nice doggie" until you have a chance to pick up a rock."

"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today."

"You never get a second chance to make a good first impression."

"Another popular humorist of the day was Will Rogers, who used to do an act where he'd twirl a lasso and absolutely slay his audiences with such wry observations as: "The only thing I know is what I read in the papers." Ha-ha! Get it? Neither do we. Must have been something he did with the lasso."

"America has never produced anybody quite like him, and there has rarely been an American humorist whose words produced less empty laughter or more sober thought. His interviews with Mussolini and Primo de Rivera help to bear out his contention that European disarmament is a farce, and that the League of Nations is a piece of eyewash designed by some of the big powers to manipulate affairs to their own advantage. Perhaps Will Rogers has done more to educate the American public in world affairs than all the professors who have been elucidating the continental chaos since the Treaty of Versailles."

"He helped steady millions of drifting people, not only financially through his charity campaigns and his own large personal gifts which he always tried to hide from public knowledge, but mentally and morally as well through the ability to lift people, guide them, make them laugh, and then make them think. Presidents, cowboys, financiers, kings, show people, children- he knew and liked them all and all were genuinely sorry when he died. I think- because of this personal trait which Lincoln had- that Will Rogers is one of the very greatest men who ever lived."

"From his earliest childhood Will Rogers had strongly defined characteristics. He was by nature affectionate and fun-loving and, though he loved to tease and play pranks on his friends, there was no malice in him. Underneath his love of fun and his careless ways, there was a great sensitiveness which, in his early years at least, sometimes caused him unhappiness. But he was quick to forgive those who hurt him as he was to ask forgiveness when he himself was in the wrong, and this, as well as many other lovable traits, made Will Rogers a great favorite among his classmates at Willie Halsell."

"Although honors were thrust upon Will Rogers thick and fast, he always had the good judgment to refuse those he felt he had no business accepting. In 1938, a presidential boom for which he was in no way responsible, arose. The Rogers County Democratic convention started it and soon it had spread everywhere. But Will himself quickly blocked it. "I certainly know that a comedian can last only till he either takes himself seriously or his audience takes him seriously," he said, "and I don't want either one of those to happen to me till I'm read- if then. So let's stop all this foolishness right now." Another time he was offered an honorary degree by the Oklahoma City University, but he refused it. "This honorary degree thing is hooey," he said. "I got too much respect for people who work and earn 'em to see 'em handed around to every notorious character." His unusual stand was praised by newspapers and magazines everywhere."

"As Will Rogers' popularity and earning capacity increased, his contributions to charities, both public and private, increased also. Although it is hard to obtain information on this phase of his life, because of his quietness and secrecy about it, it is known that he gave hundreds to newsboys' homes, maternity homes, hospitals for crippled children, and other institutions like nature. During the World War he gave hundreds of dollars to the Red Cross each month, and later, in 1927, he was made a life member of this organization, a distinction of which he was very proud, for he loved the Red Cross and the work it was doing. Eddie Cantor, the actor, once declared: "Will Rogers had Carnegie and both the Rockefellers backed off the boards in comparison. He is always giving and never telling. How much he gives away only Bill himself really can tell- and I doubt that he keeps any books on it. But I'm a poor guesser if it is less than fifty thousand dollars a year. And he'll up and deny it right, left and center, if you accuse him of it.""

"In addition to my deep appreciation of his humor the first time that I fully realized Will Rogers' exceptional and deep understanding of political and social problems was when he came home from his European trip in 1926. While I had discussed European matters with many others, both American and foreign, Will Rogers' analysis of affairs abroad was not only more interesting but proved to be more accurate than any other I had heard."

"Will Rogers was America's most complete human document. He reflected in many ways the heartbeat of America. In thought and manner of appearance and in his daily life he was probably our most typical native born, the closest living approach to what we like to call the true American."

"There is a curious parallel between Will Rogers and Abraham Lincoln. They were rare figures whom we could call beloved with ease and without embarrassment."

"The impact upon the people of America at the death of Will Rogers was similar to that produced by the death of Abraham Lincoln."

"One of the best-known and one of the least-known men in the world. By inclination, a great mixer. By instinct, a hermit."