You can’t expect to win the jackpot if you don’t put a few nickels in the machine.

Law in full 

Use it or lose it.

Law in full 

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Law in full 

Was there ever greater proof than the last fortnight’s events for Kahn’s Law: ‘The rich get rich and the poor get poorer’. The world’s bankers who have brought us to this crisis walk away with millions, while ordinary taxpayers foot the bill. No-one should be surprised. As for saving your own skin, the best advice may be Swanson’s. ‘When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats.’

Law in full 

Conceal a flaw and the world will imagine the worst.

Law in full 

When taxi drivers know the name of a FTSE boss it’s a bad sign.

Law in full 

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else (Illiterate Digest, a collection of his newspaper columns 1924).

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 (Illiterate Digest).

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr (Illiterate Digest).

When you straddle a thing, it takes a long time to explain it (Convention Articles, June 29th 1924).

You know, everybody is ignorant only on different subjects (Weekly Articles, August 31st 1924).

Heroing is one of the shortest lived professions there is (Weekly Articles, July 17th 1928).

The more ignorant you are, the quicker you fight (Daily Telegrams, August 11th 1929).

Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up then sell it. If it don’t go up don’t buy it (Daily Telegrams, October 31st 1929). Note the date: this was the Thursday after Black Tuesday, the day of the great Wall Street crash that presaged the Depression of the 1930s.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way (Daily Telegrams, December 22nd 1929).

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save (letter New York Times, April 29th 1930).

Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays (Daily Telegrams, June 28th 1931).

You can’t make a dollar without taking it from somebody (Weekly Articles, October 2nd 1932).

If I don’t see things your way, well, why should I? (Weekly Articles, December 18th 1932).

Law in full 

Those clamouring for the government to stop paying Sir Fred Goodwin his £690,000 p.a. pension and, in the words of John Prescott (himself the beneficiary of a handsome taxpayer-funded pension), “let him sue”, shoud remember Louis Brandeis’s law. Goodwin’s greed may be sickening, his lack of shame unfathomable, his hubris inexplicable, but one thing’s for sure: the rule of law is worth a lot more than whatever he receives. Goodwin’s contract should be honoured. Stuff his mouth with gold.

Law in full 

When your client’s hopping mad
Put his picture in the ad.
If he still should prove refractory
Add a picture of his factory.

Law in full 

Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.

Law in full