A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.

A smile is the universal welcome.

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Dogs laugh but they laugh with their tails.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if you don't like it.

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

A dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody. A cat really doesn't need to know that everybody loves him.

Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

This liberal progressive agenda... is the antithesis of who we are as a constitutional republic.

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.

Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.

If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

I've always been a liberal and I've always had strong socialist leanings.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

We must be both more conservative and more liberal than most students of Christian worship: conservative in holding exclusively to God's commands in Scripture as our rule of worship, and liberal in defending the liberty of those who apply those.

What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.

But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper.

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

There's nothing worse, I guess, than being black in an all-white church or being southern and being a liberal.

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

If the most liberal man that's ever been in office can get elected when 20 percent of the population identifies as liberal then I think we can elect a conservative when 40 percent of the population identifies themselves as conservative.

The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.

In vain shall Great Britain confer upon her colonies the free government and liberal principles of legislation, for which she is distinguished, if she do not carry with her the revelations of God.

Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it.