This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
American Cowboy, Actor, Humorist, Social Commentator and Vaudeville Performer
"When you're through learning, you're through."
"Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made ’em short. They may not always be kept but they can be understood."
"Why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as Prohibition did, in five years we will have the smartest people on earth."
"Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic situation? We spent six years of wild buying on credit -- everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not -- and now we are having to pay for 'em, and we are howling like a pet coon."
"Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth."
"Why don't they use a sales tax? That is the only fair and just tax. Have no tax on necessary foods, and moderate priced necessary clothes, but put a tax on every other thing you buy or use. Then the rich fellow who buys more and uses more certainly has no way of getting out of paying his share. Collect it at the source, that is at the manufacturer's. Don't depend on the retailer. Put big taxes on everything of a luxury nature. You do that, and let the working man know the rich have paid before they got it and you will do more than any one thing to settle some of the unrest and dissatisfaction that you hear every day. No slick lawyer or income tax expert can get you out of a sales tax."
"Why even the poor farmer took a raise of another ten percent just to get a loan from the bank, and nobody from the government paid any attention. But you let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help to get them back into bed again."
"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."
"Why sleep at home when you can sleep in Congress?"
"Why, every lot out here has its own agent. Agents get rich out here just off the various commissions on one lot. If an agent handles two lots he opens up a branch office and has an assistant."
"Wish all the Farmers would move to town one year, that's the only way I know to clear the thing up."
"With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke."
"Woe be to a weak nation if they live by a strong one."
"Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due."
"You are going to need sales taxes, both Federal and State, income tax, and a lot of other kinds. It’s a great country but you can’t live in it for nothing."
"You buy lots in Los Angeles with the same frequency you would newspapers in other towns. After buying it, you put it back in the hands of the agents again, for don't think you are going to get away with that lot. It has to be sold three or four times that day."
"You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in one protecting your own home."
"You can look at half the guy’s stomachs in the world, and you can see they don’t know how to order for themselves."
"You can take a sob story and a stick of candy and lead America right off into the Dead Sea."
"You can take any line of business and skill and the ones who do it the best are the ones who get the most money for it."
"You can’t have a picnic unless the party carrying the basket comes."
"You can’t legislate intelligence and common sense into people. You can’t broaden a man’s vision if he wasn’t born with one."
"You can’t say that civilization don’t advance... in every war they kill you in a new way."
"You can't break a man that don't borrow; he may not have anything, but Boy! he can look the World in the face and say, I don't owe you Birds a nickel. You will say, (if everyone stops borrowing) what will all the Bankers do? I don't care what they do. Let 'em go to work, if there is any job any of them could earn a living at. Banking and After-Dinner Speaking are two of the most Non-essential industries we have in this country. I am ready to reform if they are."
"You can't legitimately kick on income tax, for it's on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not."
"You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way."
"You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while."
"You could keep politics clean if you could figure out some way so your government never hired anyone."
"You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years."
"You got to do more than just live in the country to be a Farmer."
"You got to sorter give and take in this old world."
"You have a wonderful organization. I understand you have ten thousand here. And if you count the ones in the various federal prisons, it brings your total membership up to around thirty thousand."
"You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."
"You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people."
"You know how Congress is. They’ll vote for anything if the thing they vote for will turn around and vote for them."
"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."
"You know the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. My only solution would be to keep em both out one term and hire my good friend Henry Ford to run the whole thing, and give him a commission on what he saves us."
"You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks."
"You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects."
"You know, we're always talking about pioneers and what great folks the old pioneers were. Well, I think if we just stopped and looked at history in the face, the pioneer wasn't a thing in the world but a guy that wanted something for nothing. He was a guy that wanted to live off of everything that nature had done. He wanted to cut a tree down that didn't cost him anything, but he never did plant one. He wanted to plow up the land that should have been left to grass. We're just now learning that we can rob from nature the same way as we can rob from an individual. All he had was an ax, and a plow, and a gun, and he just went out and lived off nature. But really, he thought it was nature he was living off of, but it was really future generations that he was living off of."
"You must judge a man’s greatness by how much he will be missed."
"You never know how much a man can't remember until he is called as a witness."
"You see in the old days there was mighty few things bought on credit. Your taste had to be in harmony with your income, for it had never been any other way. I think buying autos on credit has driven more folks to (rob banks) as a regular means of livelihood than any other contributing cause... I don't reckon there has ever been a time in American homes when there was as much junk in 'em as there is today. Even our own old shack has got more junk in it that has never been used, or looked at than a storage place. Most everybody has got more than they used to have, but they haven’t got as much as they thought they ought to have. So it's all a disappointment more than a catastrophe. If we could just call back the last two or three years and do our buying a little more carefully why we would be O.K."
"You see, all these laws that they are having so much trouble wondering if they are constitutional, they were all drawn up by lawyers. For almost two-thirds of the membership of the House and Senate are lawyers."
"You shake a slogan at an American and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone."
"You wire the state or the federal government that our cow or dog is sick and they will send out experts from Washington and appropriate money to eradicate the cause. You wire them that your baby has the diphtheria or scarlet fever and see what they do....why can’t we get a government to at least do for a child’s protection, what they do for a cow or a hog?"
"You would be surprised what there is to see in this great country within 200 miles of where any of us live. I don’t care what state or what town."
"You’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that’s out always looks the best."
"You’ve got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and You’ve got to be a humorist to stay one."
"Your mothers get mighty shocked at you girls nowadays, but in her day, her mother was just on the verge of sending her to reform school."