Lift Up Your Hearts!

Will Rogers:  Wise and Witty Sayings of a Great American Humorist (Hallmark, 1969)

Perusing my bookshelves with an eye on my 95 by 65 goal #63 (Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshelves), I came upon this little book of quotations from Will Rogers. He lived from 1879 to 1935 and much of his wit is just as appropriate today. 

Rogers was the eighth child in his family. Developing a sense of humor was probably self-defense.

Enjoy!

We will never get anywhere with our finances till we pass a law saying that every time we appropriate something we got to pass another bill along with it stating where the money is coming from.

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. So that leaves us without any economic problems whatsoever, except perhaps some day to have to pay for them.

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

Why don't they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything?  And if it works as good as the Prohibition one did, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

Personally I think the saloon men put this prohibition through, as they have sold more in the last year than in any ten previous years before.

A good man can't do nothing in office because the System is against him, and a bad one can't do anything for the same reason. So bad as we are, we are better off than any other nation, so what's the use to worry?

If we didn't have two parties, we would all settle on the best men in the country and things would run fine. But as it is, we settle on the worst ones and then fight over 'em.

The Republican Convention [1928] 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 for it.

There has been many who has had to say, "Mister, can you spare a dime," but President Roosevelt is the first man in the history of the world who looked a nation in the face and said, "Mister, can you spare ten billion dollars?" Well, Congress and the American people considered it such a compliment to be asked for that much that they really liked it.

One way to solve the traffic problem would be to keep all the cars that are not paid for off the streets. Children could use the streets for playgrounds then.

We have killed more people celebrating our Independence Day that we lost fighting for it.

If all the time consumed in attending dinners and luncheons was consumed in some work, the production of this country would be doubled.

It's funny how quick a college boy can find out that the world is wrong. He might go out in the world from high school and live in it, and make a living in it for years and think it wasn't such a bad place, but let him go to college and he will be the first one down on the square on May Day to shout down with the government. But as soon as they grow up and go out and if they happen to make anything, why, they backslide.

The banker, the lawyer, and the politician are still our best bets for a laugh. Audiences haven't changed at all, and neither has the three above professions.

If we can just let other people alone and do their own fighting, we would be in good shape. When you get in trouble five thousand miles away from home you've got to have been looking for it.

Nobody wants his cause near as bad as he wants to talk about his cause.

Heroes are made every little while, but only one in a million conduct themselves afterwards so that it makes us proud that we honored them at the time.

A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics has ever read.

No nation has a monopoly on good things. Each one has something that the others could well afford to adopt.

You know I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your "gags," and I have always said I never met a man I didn't like.