Ambrose Bierce Quotes

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Ambrose Bierce

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Ambrose Bierce

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Ambrose Bierce

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Ambrose Bierce

Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion.
Ambrose Bierce

Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Ambrose Bierce

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Ambrose Bierce

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Ambrose Bierce

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce

Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong... It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
Ambrose Bierce

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Ambrose Bierce

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Ambrose Bierce

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
Ambrose Bierce

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce

Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
Ambrose Bierce

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Ambrose Bierce

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Ambrose Bierce

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Ambrose Bierce

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Ambrose Bierce

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Ambrose Bierce

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Ambrose Bierce

The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Ambrose Bierce

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Ambrose Bierce

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Ambrose Bierce

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Ambrose Bierce

When you doubt, abstain.
Ambrose Bierce

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Ambrose Bierce


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