Will Rogers

(1879-1935)

• "Everything is funny so long as it is happening to somebody else."
  • Source: The Illiterate Digest (1924)

• "I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one I didn't like."
  • Source: Epitaph

• "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.
  • Source: newspaper article rejecting the idea that he run for President of the U.S.

• "I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce"
  • Source: The Illiterate Digest (1924)

Attributed

• "A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious."

• "All I know is just what I read in the papers."
  • Notes: a comment Rogers often used in his appearances.

• "Everybody is ignorant. Only on different subjects."

• "Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."

• "Every time Congress makes a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke."

• "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 don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace."

• "I got a telegram from Amarillo, Texas, and they want me to say something about mothers-in-law. They say thay are having a mother-in-law day. I had a wonderful mother-in-law, and I always felt--after looking at mothers-in-law and seeing sons-in-law--I always felt that the jokes were on the wrong ones. No sir, you can look through everything I ever did write or say, and you never did hear me tell a joke about any mother-in-law, or any creed, color or religion, either."

• "I represent a new class of people in this country, the newly poor."

• "I tell you, this finding out how to govern a country, or even a state, or county, or even town, has got the whole world licked. There is not a type of government that can point with complete pride and say: There, this is the best that can be had!"
  • "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"

• "It's great to be great, but its greater to be human."

• "Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches."

• "Live your life so that whenever you lose, you're ahead."

• "My idea of an honest man is a fellow who declares income tax on money he sold his vote for."

• "No man is great if he thinks he is."

• "No nation ever had two better friends that we have. You know who they are? The Atlantic and Pacific oceans."

• "On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."

• "People are marvelous in their generosity if they just know the cause is there."

• "People often ask me, 'Will, where do you get your jokes?' I just tell 'em, 'Well, I watch the government and report the facts, that is all I do, and I don't even find it necessary to exaggerate.'"

• "The Democrats ran on 'Honesty' and I told 'em at the time they would never get anywhere. It was too radical for politics. The Republicans ran on 'Common Sense' and the returns showed that there were 8 million more people in the United States who had 'Common Sense' enough not to believe that there was 'Honesty' in politics."

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

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

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

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

• "We hold the distinction of being the only nation that is goin' to the poorhouse in an automobile."

• "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."

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