Original American Humour

by Will Rogers. Here's a few sayings that I came across in my American Liturature book. Some are funny, others are just so true (even today, however many years after they were first said.) Enjoy!


"You know Lincoln's famous remark about "God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them?" Well, you are not going to get people's votes nowadays by calling 'em common. Lincoln might have said it, but I bet it was not until after he was elected.

"I am not a member of any organized political party - I'm a Democrat.

"Every time we have an election we get in worse men and the country keeps right on going. Times have only proven one thing, and that is that you can't ruin this country, even with politics.

"In 1612 some wise guy decided that he would like to live of the other Virginians instead of off the forest, so they called him a politician. So politics started on these shores in 1612 and in a short space of over 300 years it has grown in leapes and bounds, where it is now America's leading racket.

"If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest batometer in the world.

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

"A fool that knows he is a fool, is one that knows he don't know all about anything. But the fool that don't know he's a fool, is the one that thinks he knows all about anything.

"Why do they call it traffic? When it ceases to move, it's not traffic.

"The minute you read something and you can't understand it, you can be almost sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer. You see, every time a lawyer writes something, he is not writing for posterity, he is writing so that endless others of his craft can make a living out of trying to figure out what he just said.

"Can you imagine our Savior dying for all of us, yet we have to argue over just whether He didn't die for us personally and not for you. Sometimes you wonder if His lessons of sacrifice and devotion was pretty near lost on a lot of us.

"Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game - it, and high taxes.

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

"Our president delivered his message to congress. That is one of the things his contract calls for. It's one of the few stipulated duties of the president - to tell congress the condition of the country.

This message, as I say, is to congress. The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but the congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the president has to tell 'em.

"Distrust of the senate started with Washington, who wanted to have 'em courtmatialed; Jefferson proposed life inprisonment for 'em; Lincoln said: the Lord must have hated 'em for he made so few of 'em; Teddy Roosevelt whittled a big stick and beat on 'em; they drove Wilson to an early grave; and Coolidge never let 'em know what he wanted, so they never knew how to vote against him.

"Lead your life so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell that family parrot to the town gossip."