Top 40 Finley Peter Dunne Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Trust everybody, but cut the cards.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

2. “Drink never made a man better, but it has made many a man think he was better.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

3. “A game you play with your own worst enemy-yourself.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

4. “Stories are meant to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

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5. “Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed by the facts.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

6. “A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

7. “There are no friends at cards or world politics.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

8. “One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

9. “A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

10. “I wonder why you can always read a doctor’s bill and you can never read his prescription.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

11. “Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

12. “If Christian scientists had more science and doctors more Christianity, it wouldn’t make any difference which you called in – if you had a good nurse.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

13. “No matter whether the Constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

14. “Opportunity knocks at every man’s door once. On some men’s door it hammers till it breaks down the door and then it goes in and wakes him up if he’s asleep, and ever afterward it works for him as a night watchman.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

15. “The American nation in the sixth ward is a fine people; they love the eagle – on the back of a dollar.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

16. “Freedom is like drink. If you take any at all, you might as well take enough to make you happy for a while.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

17. “A war expert,” said Mr. Dooley, “is a man ye niver heerd iv befure. If ye can think iv annywan whose face is onfamilyar to ye an’ ye don’t raymimber his name, an’ he’s got a job on a pa-aper ye didn’t know was published, he’s a war expert. ‘Tis.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

18. “High finance isn’t burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

19. “What is instinct? It is the natural tendency in one when filled with dismay to turn to his wife.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

20. “Meditation is a gift confined to unknown philosophers and cows. Others don’t begin to think till they begin to talk or write.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

21. “An appeal is when you ask one court to show its contempt for another court.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

22. “If ye live enough befure thirty ye won’t care to live at all afther fifty.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

23. “I niver knew a pollytician to go wrong ontil he’s been contaminated by contact with a business man.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

24. “When the American people get through with the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

25. “It don’t make much difference what you study, so long as you don’t like it.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

26. “A man never becomes an orator if he has anything to say.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

27. “Histhry is a post-mortem examination. It tellsye what a counthry died iv. But I’d like to know what it lived iv.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

28. “A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

29. “A man’s idee in a card game is war.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

30. “Work is work if you’re paid to do it, and it’s a pleasure if you pay to be allowed to do it.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

31. “The only good husbands stay bachelors: They’re too considerate to get married.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

32. “The world is not growing worse and it is not growing better – it is just turning around as usual.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

33. “What’s wan man’s news is another man’s throubles.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

34. “A man can be right and president, but he can’t be both at the same time.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

35. “Vice goes along way towards making life bearable. A little vice now and then is relished by the best of men.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

36. “Many a man that could rule a hundherd millyon sthrangers with an ir’n hand is careful to take off his shoes in the front hallway whin he comes home late at night.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

37. “To most people a savage nation is wan that doesn’t wear oncomf’rtable clothes.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

38. “A rayformer thinks he was ilicted because he was a rayformer, whin th thruth iv th matther is he was ilicted because no wan knew him.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

39. “There aint any news in being good. You might write the doings of all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and have room to spare.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

40. “The last man that makes a joke owns it.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

41. “A man’s idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady’s idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

42. “Don’t jump on a man unless he is down.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

43. “Most vegetarians I ever see looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.”

— Finley Peter Dunne

44. “The wise people are in New York because the foolish went there first, that’s the way the wise men make a living.”

— Finley Peter Dunne