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A Free Citizen In A Free State, It Seems To Me, Has An Inalienable Right To Play With Whomsoever He Will, So Long As He Does Not Disturb The General Peace. If Any Other Citizen, Offended By The Spectacle, Makes A Pother, Then That Other Citizen, And Not The Man Exercising His Inalienable Right, Should Be Put Down By The Police.

-H. L. Mencken

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A Free Citizen In

H. L. Mencken

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A Free Citizen In A Free State, It Seems To Me, Has An Inalienable Right To Play With Whomsoever He Will, So Long As He Does Not Disturb The General Peace. If Any Other Citizen, Offended By The Spectacle, Makes A Pother, Then That Other Citizen, And Not The Man Exercising His Inalienable Right, Should Be Put Down By The Police.

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I Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Do Missionaries.

Faith May Be Defined Briefly As An Illogical Belief In The Occurrence Of The Improbable.

Next To The Semi-colon, Quotation Marks Seem To Be The Chief Butts Of Reformatory Ardor.

Quotation Marks

Not By Accident, You May Be Sure, Do The Christian Scriptures Make The Father Of Knowledge A Serpent - Slimy, Sneaking And Abominable.

When A New Source Of Taxation Is Found It Never Means, In Practice, That The Old Source Is Abandoned. It Merely Means That The Politicians Have Two Ways Of Milking The Taxpayer Where They Had One Before.

When I Hear A Man Applauded By The Mob I Always Feel A Pang Of Pity For Him. All He Has To Do To Be Hissed Is To Live Long Enough.

In The Long Run All Battles Are Lost, And So Are All Wars.

Penetrating So Many Secrets, We Cease To Believe In The Unknowable. But There It Sits Nevertheless, Calmly Licking Its Chops

The Cosmos Is A Gigantic Flywheel Making 10,000 Revolutions Per Minute. Man Is A Sick Fly Taking A Dizzy Ride On It.

If The Average Man Is Made In God's Image, Then A Man Such As Beethoven Or Aristotle Is Plainly Superior To God, And So God May Be Jealous Of Him, And Eager To See His Superiority Perish With His Bodily Frame.

I Am A Strict Monogamist: It Is Twenty Years Since I Last Went To Bed With Two Women At Once, And Then I Was In My Cups And Not Myself.

It Is The Fundamental Theory Of All The More Recent American Law...that The Average Citizen Is Half-witted, And Hence Not To Be Trusted To Either His Own Devices Or His Own Thoughts.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

I Have Lived In One House In Baltimore For Nearly Forty-five Years. It Has Changed In That Time, As I Have - But Somehow It Still Remains The Same. No Conceivable Decorator's Masterpiece Could Give Me The Same Ease. It Is As Much A Part Of Me As My Two Hands. If I Had To Leave It I'd Be As Certainly Crippled As If I Lost A Leg.

The Man Who Boasts That He Habitually Tells The Truth Is Simply A Man With No Respect For It. It Is Not A Thing To Be Thrown About Loosely, Like Small Change; It Is Something To Be Cherished And Hoarded And Disbursed Only When Absolutely Necessary. The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

The Average Man Never Really Thinks From End To End Of His Life. The Mental Activity Of Such People Is Only A Mouthing Of Cliches. What They Mistake For Thought Is Simply A Repetition Of What They Have Heard. My Guess Is That Well Over 80 Percent Of The Human Race Goes Through Life Without Having A Single Original Thought.

[texas Is] The Place Where There Are The Most Cows And The Least Milk And The Most Rivers And The Least Water In Them, And Where You Can Look The Farthest To See The Least.

What Makes Philosophy So Tedious Is Not The Profundity Of Philosophers, But Their Lack Of Art; They Are Like Physicians Who Soughtto Cure A Slight Hyperacidity By Prescribing A Carload Of Burned Oyster-shells.

I Believe That It Is Better To Tell The Truth Than To Lie. I Believe That It Is Better To Be Free Than To Be A Slave. And I Believe That It Is Better To Know Than Be Ignorant.

The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Even Ordinarily Respectable.

Haste Is Of The Devil. Slowness Is Of God.

The More Noisy Negro Leaders, By Depicting All Whites As Natural And Implacable Enemies To Their Race, Have Done It A Great Disservice. Large Numbers Of Whites Who Were Formerly Very Friendly To It, And Willing To Go To Great Lengths To Help It, Are Now Resentful And Suspicious.

Those Who Can't Teach - Administrate. Those Who Can't Administrate - Go Into Politics.

Courtroom : A Place Where Jesus Christ And Judas Iscariot Would Be Equals, With The Betting Odds Favoring Judas.

But I Wonder Where We Will Land If Trial Judges Begin Deciding That The Fact That A Man Has Committed An Atrocious Crime Is Proof Sufficient That He Is Not Responsible For His Acts.

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty. If Ever A Man Is To Achieve Anything Like Dignity, It Can Happen Only If Superior Men Are Given Absolute Freedom To Think What They Want To Think And Say What They Want To Say. I Am Against Any Man And Any Organization Which Seeks To Limit Or Deny That Freedom... [and] The Superior Man Can Be Sure Of Freedom Only If It Is Given To All Men.

An Altruist Is One Who Would Be Sincerely Sorry To See His Neighbor's Children Devoured By Wolves.

There Is Only One Honest Impulse At The Bottom Of Puritanism, And That Is The Impulse To Punish The Man With A Superior Capacity For Happiness.

What The Meaning Of Human Life May Be I Don't Know: I Incline To Suspect That It Has None.

The Truth, Indeed, Is Something That Mankind, For Some Mysterious Reason, Instinctively Dislikes. Every Man Who Tries To Tell It Is Unpopular, And Even When, By The Sheer Strength Of His Case, He Prevails, He Is Put Down As A Scoundrel.

I Believe In Only One Thing: Liberty; But I Do Not Believe In Liberty Enough To Want To Force It Upon Anyone.

Religion Is "so Absurd That It Comes Close To Imbecility."

All [zoos] Actually Offer To The Public In Return For The Taxes Spent Upon Them Is A Form Of Idle And Witless Amusement, Compared To Which A Visit To A Penitentiary, Or Even To A State Legislature In Session, Is Informing, Stimulating And Ennobling.

Never Drink If You've Got Any Work To Do. Never.

Nietzsche, To The End Of His Days, Remained A Russian Pastor's Son, And Hence Two-thirds Of A Puritan; He Erected His War Upon Holiness, Toward The End, Into A Sort Of Holy War.

Human Progress Is Furthered, Not By Conformity, But By Aberration.

[c]lass Consciousness Is Not One Of Our National Diseases; We Suffer, Indeed, From Its Opposite-the Delusion That Class Barriers Are Not Real. That Delusion Reveals Itself In Many Forms, Some Of Them As Beautiful As A Glass Eye. One Is The Liberal Doctrine That A Prairie Demagogue Promoted To The United States Senate Will Instantly Show All The Sagacity Of A Metternich ... Another Is The Doctrine That A Moronrun Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Cease Thereby To Be A Moron.

The Late William Jennings Bryan, L.l.d., Always Had One Great Advantage In Controversy; He Was Never Burdened With An Understanding Of His Opponent's Case.

Philosophy First Constructs A Scheme Of Happiness And Then Tries To Fit The World To It.

A Politician Is An Animal Which Can Sit On A Fence And Yet Keep Both Ears To The Ground.

I Hate All Sports As Rabidly As A Person Who Likes Sports Hates Common Sense.

Confidence: The Feeling That Makes One Believe A Man, Even When One Knows That One Would Lie In His Place

When I Hear Artists Or Authors Making Fun Of Businessmen, I Think Of A Regiment In Which The Band Makes Fun Of The Cooks.

If We Assume That Man Actually Does Resemble God, Then We Are Forced Into The Impossible Theory That God Is A Coward, An Idiot And A Bounder.

It Is The Mission Of The Pedagogue, Not To Make His Pupils Think, But To Make Them Think Right, And The More Nearly His Own Mind Pulsates With The Great Ebbs And Flows Of Popular Delusion And Emotion, The More Admirably He Performs His Function. He May Be An Ass, But That Is Surely No Demerit In A Man Paid To Make Asses Of His Customers.

It Is Difficult To Believe That Even Idiots Ever Succumbed To Such Transparent Contradictions, To Such Gaudy Processions Of Mere Counter-words, To So Vast And Obvious A Nonsensicalitysentence After Sentence That Has No Apparent Meaning At All--stuff Quite As Bad As The Worst Bosh Of Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Love Begins Like A Triolet And Ends Like A College Yell.

One Of The Things That Makes A Negro Unpleasant To White Folk Is The Fact That He Suffers From Their Injustice. He Is Thus A Standing Rebuke To Them.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man. One May Believe In An Idea Absolutely, But Not In A Man.

I Believe That Any Man Who Takes The Liberty Of Another Into His Keeping Is Bound To Become A Tyrant, And That Any Man Who Yields Up His Liberty, In However Slight The Measure, Is Bound To Become A Slave.

I Have Long Been Convinced That The Idea Of Liberty Is Abhorrent To Most Human Beings. What They Want Is Security, Not Freedom. Thus It Seldom Causes Any Public Indignation When An Enterprising Tyrant Claps Down On One Of His Enemies. To Most Men It Seems A Natural Proceeding.

Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

I'm Thoroughly Convinced That Editors Don't Help Authors.

No Married Man Is Genuinely Happy If He Has To Drink Worse Whisky Than He Used To Drink When He Was Single.

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, In That All Government Must Necessarily Make War On Liberty, And That The Democratic Government Is At Least As Bad As Any Of The Other Forms.

Wherever I Sit Is The Head Of The Table.

Two Simple Principles Lie At The Bottom Of The Whole Matter, And They May Be Precipitated Into Two Rules. The First Is That, When There Is A Choice, The Milder Drink Is Always The Better-not Merely The Safer But The Better. The Second Is That No Really Enlightened Drinker Ever Takes A Drink At A Time When He Has Any Work To Do. There Is, Of Course, More To It Than This; But These Are Sufficient For The Beginner, And Even The Virtuoso Never Outgrows Them.

Off Goes The Head Of The King, And Tyranny Gives Way To Freedom. The Change Seems Abysmal. Then, Bit By Bit, The Face Of Freedom Hardens, And By And By It Is The Old Face Of Tyranny. Then Another Cycle, And Another. But Under The Play Of All These Opposites There Is Something Fundamental And Permanent - The Basic Delusion That Men May Be Governed And Yet Be Free.

Misogynist: A Man Who Hates Women As Much As Women Hate One Another.

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Nine Out Of Ten Americans Are Actually Monarchists At Bottom. The Fact Is Proved By Their High Suseptibility To Political Claims By President's Sons And Other Relatives, Usually Nonentities.

Puritanism. The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.

I Confess I Enjoy Democracy Immensely. It Is Incomparably Idiotic, And Hence Incomparably Amusing.

I Hope I Need Not Confess That A Large Part Of My Stock In Trade Consists Of Platitudes Rescued From The Cobwebbed Shelves Of Yesterday... This Borrowing And Refurbishing Of Shop-worn Goods, As A Matter Of Fact, Is The Invariable Habit Of Traders In Ideas, At All Times And Everywhere. It Is Not, However, That All The Conceivable Human Notions Have Been Thought Out; It Is Simply, To Be Quite Honest, That The Sort Of Men Who Volunteer To Think Out New Ones Seldom, If Ever, Have Wind Enough For A Full Day's Work.

The Most Valuable Of All Human Possessions, Next To A Superior And Disdainful Air, Is The Reputation Of Being Well-to-do.

At Eight Or Nine, I Suppose Intelligence Is No More Than A Small Spot Of Light On The Floor Of A Large And Murky Room.

Men Become Civilized, Not In Proportion To Their Willingness To Believe, But In Their Readiness To Doubt.

The Most Disgusting Cad In The World Is The Man Who On The Grounds Of Decorum And Morality Avoids The Game Of Love. He Is One Who Puts His Own Ease And Security Above The Most Laudable Of Philanthropies.

Opera In English Is, In The Main, Just About As Sensible As Baseball In Italian.

The Average Schoolmaster Is And Always Must Be Essentially An Ass, For How Can One Imagine An Intelligent Man Engaging In So Puerile An Avocation.

The Artist Is Not A Reporter, But A Great Teacher. It Is Not His Business To Depict The World As It Is, But As It Ought To Be.

It Is More Blessed To Give Than Receive; For Example, Wedding Presents.

Democracy Is Only A Dream: It Should Be Put In The Same Category As Arcadia, Santa Claus, And Heaven.

[a Formula For Answering Controversial Letters -- Without Even Reading The Letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You May Be Right.

The Objection Of The Scandalmonger Is Not That She Tells Of Racy Doings, But That She Pretends To Be Indignant About Them.

To Die For An Idea; It Is Unquestionably Noble. But How Much Nobler It Would Be If Men Died For Ideas That Were True!

The Public ... Demands Certainties ... But There Are Not Certainties

Decision Making

All Great Religions, In Order To Escape Absurdity, Have To Admit A Dilution Of Agnosticism. It Is Only The Savage, Whether Of The African Bush Or The American Gospel Tent, Who Pretends To Know The Will And Intent Of God Exactly And Completely.

Women Have A Hard Time Of It In This World. They Are Oppressed By Man-made Laws, Man-made Social Customs, Masculine Egoism, The Delusion Of Masculine Superiority. Their One Comfort Is The Assurance That, Even Though It May Be Impossible To Prevail Against Man, It Is Always Possible To Enslave And Torture A Man.

Popularity--the Capacity For Listening Sympathetically When Men Boast Of Their Wives And Women Complain Of Their Husbands.

Women Have Simple Tastes. They Get Pleasure Out Of The Conversation Of Children In Arms And Men In Love.

Conscience Is The Inner Voice That Warns Us That Someone Might Be Looking.

If A Sense Of Duty Tortures A Man, It Also Enables Him To Achieve Prodigies.

Whenever You Hear A Man Speak Of His Love For His Country, It Is A Sign That He Expects To Be Paid For It.

Women In General Seem To Me To Be Appreciably More Intelligent Than Men. A Great Many Of Them Suffer In Silence From The Imbecilities Of Their Husbands.

Of All The Classes Of Men, I Dislike The Most Those Who Make Their Livings By Talking - Actors, Clergymen, Politicians, Pedagogues, And So On. .... It Is Almost Impossible To Imagine A Talker Who Sticks To The Facts. Carried Away By The Sound Of His Own Voice And The Applause From The Groundlings, He Makes Inevitably The Jump From Logic To Mere Rhetoric.

There Is Always A Sheet Of Paper. There Is Always A Pen. There Is Always A Way Out.

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out For Himself.

The Best Years Are The Forties; After Fifty A Man Begins To Deteriorate, But In The Forties He Is At The Maximum Of His Villainy.

The Central Belief Of Every Moron Is That He Is The Victim Of A Mysterious Conspiracy Against His Common Rights And True Deserts.

On The One Hand, We May Tell The Truth, Regardless Of Consequences, And On The Other Hand We May Mellow It And Sophisticate It To Make It Humane And Tolerable.

Telling The Truth

Economic Independence Is The Foundation Of The Only Sort Of Freedom Worth A Damn

The Penalty For Laughing In A Courtroom Is Six Months In Jail; If It Were Not For This Penalty, The Jury Would Never Hear The Evidence.

Justice Is What You Get When You Run Out Of Money.

Poverty Is A Soft Pedal Upon The Branches Of Human Activity, Not Excepting The Spiritual.

Youth, Though It May Lack Knowledge, Is Certainly Not Devoid Of Intelligence; It Sees Through Shams With Sharp And Terrible Eyes.

To Sum Up: 1. The Cosmos Is A Gigantic Fly-wheel Making 10,000 Revolutions A Minute. 2. Man Is A Sick Fly Taking A Dizzy Ride On It. 3. Religion Is The Theory That The Wheel Was Designed And Set Spinning To Give Him The Ride.

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

Government Is Actually The Worst Failure Of Civilized Man.

To The Best Of My Knowledge And Belief, The Average American Newspaper, Even Of The So-called Better Sort, Is Not Only Quite As Bad As Upton Sinclair Says It Is, But 10 Times Worse

The Objection To Puritans Is Not That They Try To Make Us Think As They Do, But That They Try To Make Us Do As They Think.

The Book Of Revelation Has All The Authority, In These Theological Uplands, Of Military Orders In Time Of War. The People Turn To It For Light Upon All Their Problems, Spiritual And Secular.

A Man Always Blames The Woman Who Fools Him. In The Same Way He Blames The Door He Walks Into In The Dark.

Funny Inspirational

Change Is Not Progress.

Citizenship In New York Is Now Worth No More Than Citizenship In Arkansas, For It Is Open To Any Applicant From The Marshes Of Bessarabia, And, Still Worse, To Any Applicant From Arkansas.

The Aim Of Poetry, It Appears, Is To Fill The Mind With Lofty Thoughts--not To Give It Joy, But To Give It A Grand And Somewhat Gaudy Sense Of Virtue. The Essay Is A Weapon Against The Degenerate Tendencies Of The Age. The Novel, Properly Conceived, Is A Means Of Uplifting The Spirit; Its Aim Is To Inspire, Not Merely To Satisfy The Low Curiosity Of Man In Man.

On Some Great And Glorious Day The Plain Folks Of The Land Will Reach Their Heart's Desire At Last, And The White House Will Be Adorned By A Downright Moron.

Man Is Always Looking For Someone To Boast To; Woman Is Always Looking For A Shoulder To Put Her Head On.

Archbishop - A Christian Ecclesiastic Of A Rank Superior To That Attained By Christ.

Socialist: A Man Suffering From An Overwhelming Conviction To Believe What Is Not True.

The Typical Lawmaker Of Today Is A Man Wholly Devoid Of Principle - A Mere Counter In A Grotesque And Knavish Game. If The Right Pressure Could Be Applied To Him, He Would Be Cheerfully In Favor Of Polygamy, Astrology Or Cannibalism.

It Is Impossible To Imagine Goethe Or Beethoven Being Good At Billiards Or Golf.

The Difference Between The Smartest Dog And The Stupidest Man - Say A Tennessee Holy Roller - Is Really Very Small.

God Is The Immemorial Refuge Of The Incompetent, The Helpless, And The Miserable. They Find Not Only Sanctuary In His Arms, But Also A Kind Of Superiority, Soothing To Their Macerated Egos; He Will Set Them Above Their Betters.

Nature Abhors A Moron.

Equality Before The Law Is Probably Forever Unattainable. It Is A Noble Ideal, But It Can Never Be Realized, For What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

The Idea That The Sole Aim Of Punishment Is To Prevent Crime Is Obviously Grounded Upon The Theory That Crime Can Be Prevented, Which Is Almost As Dubious As The Notion That Poverty Can Be Prevented.

A Professional Politician Is A Professionally Dishonorable Man. In Order To Get Anywhere Near High Office He Has To Make So Many Compromises And Submit To So Many Humiliations That He Becomes Indistinguishable From A Streetwalker.

The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

A Progressive Is One Who Is In Favor Of More Taxes Instead Of Less, More Bureaus And Jobholders, More Paternalism And Meddling, More Regulation Of Private Affairs And Less Liberty. In General, He Would Be Inclined To Regard The Repeal Of Any Tax As Outrageous.

A Judge Is A Law Student Who Marks His Own Examination Papers.

The Taboos That I Have Mentioned Are Extraordinarily Harsh And Numerous. They Stand Around Nearly Every Subject That Is Genuinely Important To Man: They Hedge In Free Opinion And Experimentation On All Sides. Consider, For Example, The Matter Of Religion. It Is Debated Freely And Furiously In Almost Every Country In The World Save The United States, But Here The Critic Is Silenced. The Result Is That All Religions Are Equally Safeguarded Against Criticism, And That All Of Them Lose Vitality. We Protect The Status Quo, And So Make Steady War Upon Revision And Improvement.

The Thing Constantly Overlooked By Those Hopefuls Who Talk About Abolishing War Is That It Is By No Means An Evidence Of Decay But Rather A Proof Of Health And Vigor.

The Extortions And Oppressions Of Government Will Go On So Long As Such Bare Fraudulence Deceives And Disarms The Victims; So Long As They Are Ready To Swallow The Immemorial Official Theory That Protesting Against The Stealings Of The Archbishop's Secretary's Nephew's Mistress' Illegitimate Son Is A Sin Against The Holy Ghost.

No Professional Politician Is Ever Actually In Favor Of Public Economy. It Is His Implacable Enemy, And He Knows It. All Professional Politicians Are Dedicated Wholeheartedly To Waste And Corruption. They Are The Enemies Of Every Decent Man.

Deep Within The Heart Of Every Evangelist Lies The Wreck Of A Car Salesman.

Perhaps The Most Revolting Character That The United States Ever Produced Was The Christian Businessman.

The Notion That Anything Is Gained By Fixing A Language In A Groove Is Cherished Only By Pedants.

The Only Liberty An Inferior Man Really Cherishes Is The Liberty To Quit Work, Stretch Out In The Sun, And Scratch Himself.

The Best Teacher Of Children, In Brief, Is One Who Is Essentially Childlike.

Whenever I Write Anything That Sets Up Controversy Its Meaning Is Distorted Almost Instantly. Even The Editorial Writers Of Newspapers Seem To Be Unable To Understand The Plainest Sentence.

I Know Some Who Are Constantly Drunk On Books As Other Men Are Drunk On Whiskey.

The Plain People, Hereafter As In The Past, Will Continue To Make Their Own Language, And The Best That Grammarians Can Do Is To Follow After It, Haltingly, And Not Often With Much Insight Into It.

It Is The Natural Tendency Of The Ignorant To Believe What Is Not True. In Order To Overcome That Tendency It Is Not Sufficient To Exhibit The True; It Is Also Necessary To Expose And Denounce The False.

A Cynic Is A Man Who, When He Smells Flowers, Looks Around For A Coffin.

Poetry Has Done Enough When It Charms, But Prose Must Also Convince.

Religion Is Fundamentally Opposed To Everything I Hold In Veneration - Courage, Clear Thinking, Honesty, Fairness, And, Above All, Love Of The Truth.

Let No One Mistake It For Comedy, Farcical Though It May Be In All Its Details. It Serves Notice On The Country That Neanderthal Man Is Organizing In These Forlorn Backwaters Of The Land, Led By A Fanatic, Rid Of Sense And Devoid Of Conscience.

Liberals Have Many Tails And Chase Them All.

Socialism: Nothing More Than The Theory That The Slave Is Always More Virtuous Than His Master.

The Main Thing That Every Political Campaign In The United States Demonstrates Is That The Politicians Of All Parties, Despite Their Superficial Enmities, Are Really Members Of One Great Brotherhood. Their Principal, And Indeed Their Sole, Object Is To Collar Public Office, With All The Privileges And Profits That Go Therewith. They Achieve This Collaring By Buying Votes With Other People's Money.

A Society Made Up Of Individuals Who Were All Capable Of Original Thought Would Probably Be Unendurable.

Original Thought

There Comes A Day Of Public Ceremonial, And A Chance To Make A Speech.... A Million Voters With Iqs Below 60 Have Their Ears Glued To The Radio. It Takes Four Days' Hard Work To Concoct A Speech Without A Sensible Word In It. Next A Dam Must Be Opened Somewhere. Four Dry Senators Get Drunk And Make A Painful Scene. The Presidential Automobile Runs Over A Dog. It Rains.

A Good Politician Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

Great Artists Are Modest Almost As Seldom As They Are Faithful To Their Wives.

The Liberation Of The Human Mind Has Never Been Furthered By Dunderheads.

Democracy Is Grounded Upon So Childish A Complex Of Fallacies That They Must Be Protected By A Rigid System Of Taboos, Else Even Halfwits Would Argue It To Pieces. Its First Concern Must Be To Penalize The Free Play Of Ideas.

Laws Are No Longer Made By A Rational Process Of Public Discussion; They Are Made By A Process Of Blackmail And Intimidation, And They Are Executed In The Same Manner

Man Makes Love By Braggadocio, And Woman Makes Love By Listening.

I Never Listen To Debates. They Are Dreadful Things Indeed. The Plain Truth Is That I Am Not A Fair Man, And Don't Want To Hear Both Sides. On All Known Subjects, Ranging From Aviation To Xylophone-playing, I Have Fixed And Invariable Ideas. They Have Not Changed Since I Was Four Or Five.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

Watching Two Women Kiss Is Like Watching Two Prizefighters Shake Hands.

The Aim Of Public Education Is Not To Spread Enlightenment At All; It Is Simply To Reduce As Many Individuals As Possible To The Same Safe Level, To Breed A Standard Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

The Movies Today Are Too Rich To Have Any Room For Genuine Artists. They Produce A Few Passable Craftsmen, But No Artists. Can You Imagine A Beethoven Making $100, 000 A Year?

It Is Even Harder For The Average Ape To Believe That He Has Descended From Man.

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, And That Trying To Improve It Is Largely A Waste Of Time.

People Say We Need Religion When What They Really Mean Is We Need Police.

All Talk Of Winning The People By Appealing To Their Intelligence, Of Conquering Them By Impeccable Syllogism, Is So Much Moonshine.

Has The Art Of Politics No Apparent Utility? Does It Appear To Be Unqualifiedly Ratty, Raffish, Sordid, Obscene, And Low Down, Andits Salient Virtuosi A Gang Of Unmitigated Scoundrels? Then Let Us Not Forget Its High Capacity To Soothe And Tickle The Midriff, Its Incomparable Services As A Maker Of Entertainment.

The Whole Aim Of Practical Politics Is To Keep The Populace Alarmed (and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety) By Menacing It With An Endless Series Of Hobgoblins, All Of Them Imaginary.

Democracies Have

Genius: The Ability To Prolong One's Childhood.

Any Man Who, Having A Child Or Children He Can't Support, Proceeds To Have Another Should Be Sterilized At Once.

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

Democracy Must Be A Sound Scheme At Bottom, Else It Would Not Survive Such Cruel Strains.

The Only Guarantee Of The Bill Of Rights Which Continues To Have Any Force And Effect Is The One Prohibiting Quartering Troops On Citizens In Time Of Peace. All The Rest Have Been Disposed Of By Judicial Interpretation And Legislative Whittling.

There Are Some Politicians Who, If Their Constituents Were Cannibals, Would Promise Them Missionaries In Every Pot.

God Must Love The Rich Or He Wouldn't Divide So Much Among So Few Of Them.

The Only Time You Have A Free Press Is When You Own One.

The Kind Of Man Who Demands That Government Enforce His Ideas Is Always The Kind Whose Ideas Are Idiotic.

All Government, In Its Essence, Is A Conspiracy Against The Superior Man: It's One Permanent Object Is To Oppress Him And Cripple Him... One Of Its Primary Functions Is To Regiment Men By Force, To Make Them As Much Alike As Possible And As Dependent Upon One Another As Possible, To Search Out And Combat Originality Among Them.

Lying Is Not Only Excusable; It Is Not Only Innocent; It Is, Above All, Necessary And Unavoidable. Without The Ameliorations That It Offers, Life Would Become A Mere Syllogism And Hence Too Metallic To Be Borne.

In My Day A Reporter Who Took An Assignment Was Wholly On His Own Until He Got Back To The Office, And Even Then He Was Little Molested Until His Copy Was Turned In At The Desk; Today He Tends To Become Only A Homunculus At The End Of A Telephone Wire, And The Reduction Of His Observations To Prose Is Commonly Farmed Out To Literary Castrati Who Never Leave The Office, And Hence Never Feel The Wind Of The World In Their Faces Or See Anything With Their Own Eyes.

The Function Of A Newspaper In A Democracy Is To Stand As A Sort Of Chronic Opposition To The Reigning Quacks. The Minute It Begins To Out-whoop Them It Forfeits Its Character And Becomes Ridiculous.

It Is Impossible To Believe That The Same God Who Permitted His Own Son To Die A Bachelor Regards Celibacy As An Actual Sin.

War May Make A Fool Of Man, But It By No Means Degrades Him; On The Contrary, It Tends To Exalt Him, And Its Net Effects Are Much Like Those Of Motherhood On Women.

Government Today Is Growing Too Strong To Be Safe. There Are No Longer Any Citizens In The World There Are Only Subjects. They Work Day In And Day Out For Their Masters They Are Bound To Die For Their Masters At Call. Out Of This Working And Dying They Tend To Get Less And Less.

Every Decent Man Is Ashamed Of The Government He Lives Under.

The Chief Contribution Of Protestantism To Human Thought Is Its Massive Proof That God Is A Bore.

The So-called Religious Organizations Which Now Lead The War Against The Teaching Of Evolution Are Nothing More, At Bottom, Than Conspiracies Of The Inferior Man Against His Betters.

Poetry Is A Comforting Piece Of Fiction Set To More Or Less Lascivious Music.

I Am Never Much Interested In The Effects Of What I Write....i Seldom Read With Any Attention The Reviews Of My...books. Two Times Out Of Three I Know Something About The Reviewer, And In Very Few Cases Have I Any Respect For His Judgments. Thus His Praise, If He Praises Me, Leaves Me Unmoved. I Can't Recall Any Review That Has Even Influenced Me In The Slightest. I Live In Sort Of A Vacuum, And I Suspect That Most Other Writers Do, Too. It Is Hard To Imagine One Of The Great Ones Paying Any Serious Attention To Contemporary Opinion.

Injustice Is Relatively Easy To Bear; What Stings Is Justice.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

A Skeptic As To All Ideas, Including Especially My Own, I Have Never Suffered A Pang When The Ideas Of Some Other Imbecile Prevailed.

A Newspaper Is A Device For Making The Ignorant More Ignorant And The Crazy Crazier.

The Most Common Of All Follies Is To Believe In The Palpably Untrue.

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

There Is Nothing Worse Than An Idle Hour, With No Occupation Offering. People Who Have Many Such Hours Are Simply Animals Waiting Docilely For Death. We All Come To That State Soon Or Late. It Is The Curse Of Senility.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

It Is Hell, Of Course, That Makes Priests Powerful, Not Heaven, For After Thousands Of Years Of So-called Civilization Fear Remains The One Common Denominator Of Mankind

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

The Allurement That Women Hold Out To Men Is Precisely The Allurement That Cape Hatteras Holds Out To Sailors; They Are Enormously Dangerous And Hence Enormously Fascinating.

[referring To Fdr] If He Became Convinced Tomorrow That Coming Out For Cannibalism Would Get Him The Votes He Needs So Sorely, He Would Begin Fattening A Missionary In The White House Yard Come Wednesday.

As Long As The Southern Colleges Have Revivals On Their Campuses And Students Get Converted To Methodism And Join The Ymca And Are Accepted As Gentlemen, It Will Be Impossible To Think Of The South As Civilized...the Educated Folk Of The Old South Took Theology Lightly, And Religion To Them Was Hardly More Than A Charming Ritual, Useful On Solemn Occassions.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

Remorse - Regret That One Waited So Long To Do It.

No Form Of Liberty Is Worth A Darn [sic] Which Doesn't Give Us The Right To Do Wrong Now And Then.

The Chief Business Of The Nation, As A Nation, Is The Setting Up Of Heroes, Mainly Bogus.

Every Failure Teaches A Man Something, To Wit, That He Will Probably Fail Again.

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William S. Paley

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