Samuel Butler Quotes

If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.

All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them.

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.

But who is it that has made my people drunk? Indians cannot make whiskey. Indians do not sell it. But white people make it and bring it among us. It is they that have brought the evil upon us and we cannot remove it. The white people can remove it and now we call upon them to do it. We ask them to take their whiskey and run away, and leave us sober as they found us.

The greatest pleasure of this people [Russians] is drunkenness.

While we may have taken away some of the criminal element when we repealed prohibition, we certainly didn't solve the problem of alcoholism.

I refer to the fact, acknowledged now by all professionals in the field, that alcoholism as such is not a legal problem—it is a health problem.

Drink is the only opponent I have been unable to beat.

Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

There are zillions of people who say that alcoholism is a disease, but not many of them believe it.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

People are saying that I'm an alcoholic, and that's not true, because I only drink when I work, and I'm a workaholic.

In my family, they were all big boozers.

First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.

Liquor drinking is not a wrong; but excessive drinking is.

It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.

… there are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world

My relationship with alcohol became unsustainable. For people who are going to ask, 'Were you an alcoholic?' I suppose the short answer is 'Yes.'

I have a very powerful form of alcoholism. I finally gave up and accepted the fact that if I even smell too much booze, I'm going to start drinking again. That's just how I am.

The English are very indulgent to episodes of alcoholic insanity.

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.

We have to do more about addiction, not only drugs, but also alcohol.

When I was a practicing alcoholic, I was unbelievable. One side effect was immense suspicion: I'd come off tour like Inspector Clouseau on acid. 'Where's this cornflake come from? It wasn't here before.