I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.
He [Henry Clay] is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel that ever disgraces the image of God—nothing too mean or low for him to condescend to.
There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
Patriotism is seen not only the last refuge of the scoundrel bus as the first bolt-hole of the hypocrite.
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
[Describing Abraham Lincoln:] Filthy story-teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, robber, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.
Arlen Specter is a scoundrel.
Patriotism: The first resort of a scoundrel.
Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!
Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.
… a damnable villain
Patriotism is the trump card of a scoundrel.
It is hardly possible to believe that one is not the greatest scoundrel on earth, when one is assured of it on all sides on such excellent authority.
Reacting to his then current low popularity:
In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
Human nature is a scoundrel's favorite explanation.
NOBODY messes with "The Bad Guy"!
I'm an advocate of the great Dr. Johnson, the English man of letters who said that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.
