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An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

-H. L. Mencken

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An Author, Like Any

H. L. Mencken

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An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

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All Successful Newspapers Are Ceaselessly Querulous And Bellicose. They Never Defend Anyone Or Anything If They Can Help It; If The Job Is Forced On Them, They Tackle It By Denouncing Someone Or Something Else.

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

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.

Wealth - Any Income That Is At Least One Hundred Dollars More A Year Than The Income Of One's Wife's Sister's Husband.

To Be Happy One Must Be (a) Well Fed, Unhounded By Sordid Cares, At Ease In Zion, (b) Full Of A Comfortable Feeling Of Superiority To The Masses Of One's Fellow Men, And (c) Delicately And Unceasingly Amused According To One's Taste. It Is My Contention That, If This Definition Be Accepted, There Is No Country In The World Wherein A Man Constituted As I Am - A Man Of My Peculiar Weakness, Vanities, Appetites, And Aversions - Can Be So Happy As He Can Be In The United States.

The True Aim Of Medicine Is Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard And Rescue Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices. The Physician Does Not Preach Repentance; He Offers Absolution.

When I Reach The Shades At Last It Will No Doubt Astonish Satan To Discover, On Thumbing My Dossier, That I Was A Member Of The Y.m.c.a.

Psychotherapy Is The Theory That The Patient Will Probably Get Well Anyhow And Is Certainly A Damn Fool.

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.

If A Politician Found He Had Cannibals Among His Constituents, He Would Promise Them Missionaries For Dinner.

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.

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 Critic, To Interpret His Artist, Even To Understand His Artist, Must Be Able To Get Into The Mind Of His Artist; He Must Feel And Comprehend The Vast Pressure Of The Creative Passion.

I Know Of No Existing Nation That Deserves To Live, And I Know Of Very Few Individuals.

Here The Only Genuine Conflict Is Between True Believers. Of A Given Text In Holy Writ One Faction May Say This Thing And Another That, But Both Agree Unreservedly That The Text Itself Is Impeccable, And Neither In The Midst Of The Most Violent Disputation Would Venture To Accuse The Other Of Doubt. To Call A Man A Doubter In These Parts Is Equal To Accusing Him Of Cannibalism. Even The Infidel Scopes Himself Is Not Charged With Any Such Infamy.

A Mood Of Constructive Criticism Being Upon Me, I Propose Forthwith That The Method Of Choosing Legislators Now Prevailing In The United States Be Abandoned And That The Method Used In Choosing Juries Be Substituted. That Is To Say, I Propose That The Men Who Make Our Laws Be Chosen By Chance And Against Will Of All The Rest Of Us, As Now.

A Woman Wishes To Mother A Man Simply Because She Sees Into His Helplessness, His Need Of An Amiable Environment, His Touching Self-delusion.

There Is, It Appears, A Conspiracy Of Scientists Afoot. Their Purpose Is To Break Down Religion, Propagate Immorality, And So Reduce Mankind To The Level Of Brutes. They Are The Sworn And Sinister Agents Of Beelzebub, Who Yearns To Conquer The World, And Has His Eye Especially Upon Tennessee.]

Conquer The World

All Government Is, In Its Essence, Organized Exploitation, And In Virtually All Of Its Existing Forms It Is The Implacable Enemy Of Every Industrious And Well-disposed Man.

The Gettysburg Adress Has Been Included, Of Late, In Several Anthologies Of Poetry. It Actually Meets The Major Requirement Of All Poetry: It Is A Mellifluous And Emotional Statement Of The Obviously Not True. The Men Who Fought For Self-determination At Gettysburg Were Not The Federals But The Confederates.

Law And Its Instrument, Government, Are Necessary To The Peace And Safety Of All Of Us, But All Of Us, Unless We Live The Lives Of Mud Turtles, Frequently Find Them Arrayed Against Us.

A Prohibitionist Is The Sort Of Man One Couldn't Care To Drink With, Even If He Drank.

By Profession A Biologist, [thomas Henry Huxley] Covered In Fact The Whole Field Of The Exact Sciences, And Then Bulged Through Its Four Fences. Absolutely Nothing Was Uninteresting To Him. His Curiosity Ranged From Music To Theology And From Philosophy To History. He Didn't Simply Know Something About Everything; He Knew A Great Deal About Everything.

Nothing Is So Abject And Pathetic As A Politician Who Has Lost His Job, Save Only A Retired Stud-horse.

War Is The Only Sport Which Is Genuinely Amusing. And It Is The Only Sport Which Has Any Intelligible Use.

The Objection To A Communist Always Resolves Itself Into The Fact That He Is Not A Gentleman.

You Never Push A Noun Against A Verb Without Trying To Blow Up Something.

Science Is Unflinchingly Deterministic, And It Has Begun To Force Its Determinism Into Morals. On Some Shining Tomorrow A Psychoanalyst May Be Put Into The Box To Prove That Perjury Is Simply A Compulsion Neurosis, Like Beating Time With The Foot At A Concert Or Counting The Lampposts Along The Highway.

Why Assume So Glibly That The God Who Presumably Created The Universe Is Still Running It? It Is Certainly Conceivable That He May Have Finished It And Then Turned It Over To Lesser Gods To Operate.

The Notion That A Radical Is One Who Hates His Country Is Naïve And Usually Idiotic. He Is, More Likely, One Who Likes His Country More Than The Rest Of Us, And Is Thus More Disturbed Than The Rest Of Us When He Sees It Debauched. He Is Not A Bad Citizen Turning To Crime; He Is A Good Citizen Driven To Despair.

A Man Who Knows A Subject Thoroughly, A Man So Soaked In It That He Eats It, Sleeps It And Dreams It- This Man Can Always Teach It With Success, No Matter How Little He Knows Of Technical Pedagogy.

The Art Of Politics, Under Democracy, Is Simply The Art Of Ringing It. Two Branches Reveal Themselves. There Is The Art Of The Demagogue, And There Is The Art Of What May Be Called, By A Shot-gun Marriage Of Latin And Greek, The Demaslave. They Are Complementary, And Both Of Them Are Degrading To Their Practitioners. The Demagogue Is One Who Preaches Doctrines He Knows To Be Untrue To Men He Knows To Be Idiots. The Demaslave Is One Who Listens To What These Idiots Have To Say And Then Pretends That He Believes It Himself.

The Acting That One Sees Upon The Stage Does Not Show How Human Beings Comport Themselves In Crises, But How Actors Think They Ought To. It Is Thus, Like Poetry And Religion, A Device For Gladdening The Heart With What Is Palpably Not True.

What Is The Function That A Clergyman Performs In The World? Answer: He Gets His Living By Assuring Idiots That He Can Save Them From An Imaginary Hell.

Every Step In Human Progress, From The First Feeble Stirrings In The Abyss Of Time, Has Been Opposed By The Great Majority Of Men. Every Valuable Thing That Has Been Added To The Store Of Man's Possessions Has Been Derided By Them When It Was New, And Destroyed By Them When They Had The Power. They Have Fought Every New Truth Ever Heard Of, And They Have Killed Every Truth-seeker Who Got Into Their Hands.

Only A Jackass Ever Talks Over His Affairs With A Woman, Whether She Be His Sweetheart, Wife, Or Sister, Or Mother.

Liberty Is Of Small Value To The Lower Third Of Humanity. They Greatly Prefer Security, Which Means Protection By Some Class Above Them. They Are Always In Favor Of Despots Who Promise To Feed Them. The Only Liberty An Inferior Man Really Cherishes Is The Liberty To Quit Work, Stretch Out In The Sun, And Scratch Himself.

The War On Privilege Will Never End. Its Next Grat Campaign Will Be Against The Special Privileges Of The Underprivileged.

The Only Way To Reconcile Science And Religion Is To Set Up Something Which Is Not Science And Something That Is Not Religion.

Science And Religion

No Government Is Ever Really In Favor Of So-called Civil Rights. It Always Tries To Whittle Them Down. They Are Preserved Under All Governments, Insofar As They Survive At All, By Special Classes Of Fanatics, Often Highly Dubious.

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.

Five Years Of Prohibition Have Had, At Least, This One Benign Effect: They Have Completely Disposed Of All The Favorite Arguments Of The Prohibitionists. None Of The Great Boons And Usufructs That Were To Follow The Passage Of The Eighteenth Amendment Has Come To Pass. There Is Not Less Drunkenness In The Republic, But More. There Is Not Less Crime, But More. There Is Not Less Insanity, But More. The Cost Of Government Is Not Smaller, But Vastly Greater. Respect For Law Has Not Increased, But Diminished.

The Believing Mind Reaches Its Perihelion In The So-called Liberals. They Believe In Each And Every Quack Who Sets Up His Booth Inthe Fairgrounds, Including The Communists. The Communists Have Some Talents Too, But They Always Fall Short Of Believing In The Liberals.

An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

God Is A Republican, And Santa Claus Is A Democrat.

For Me To Go Into Politics Would Be Like Sending A Virgin Into A House Of Ill-repute.

All The Great Villainies Of History, From The Murder Of Abel Onward, Have Been Perpetrated By Sober Men, Chiefly By Teetotalers.

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

Taxation, For Example, Is Eternally Lively; It Concerns Nine-tenths Of Us More Directly Than Either Smallpox Or Golf, And Has Just As Much Drama In It; Moreover, It Has Been Mellowed And Made Gay By As Many Gaudy, Preposterous Theories

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

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

Moral Certainty Is Always A Sign Of Cultural Inferiority. The More Uncivilized The Man, The Surer He Is That He Knows Precisely What Is Right And What Is Wrong.

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies. When They Fail To Come Off Its Clergy Simply Say That They Will Be Realized Later On. Thus, If We Have Another Boom, They Will Argue That The Collapse Of Capitalism Is Only Postponed. The Fact That The Greatest Booms Ever Heard Of Followed Marx's Formal Prophecy Of The Downfall Of Capitalism Is Already Forgotten, Just As Millions Have Long Since Forgotten The Early Christian Prophecy That The End Of The World Was At Hand. The First Christians Accepted Postponements As Docilely As The Communists Of Today.

Mankind Has Failed Miserably In Its Effort To Devise A Rational System Of Government. [...] The Art Of Government Is The Exclusive Possession Of Quacks And Frauds. It Has Been So Since The Earliest Days, And It Will Probably Remain So Until The End Of Time.

As For Me, My Literary Theory, Like My Politics, Is Based Chiefly Upon One Main Idea, To Wit, The Idea Of Freedom. I Am, In Brief, A Libertarian Of The Most Extreme Variety, And Know Of No Human Right That Is One-tenth As Valuable As The Simple Right To Utter What Seems (at The Moment) To Be The Truth

Literary Theory

Man, Without A Saving Touch Of Woman In Him, Is Too Doltish, Too Naive And Romantic, Too Easily Deluded And Lulled To Sleep By His Imagination To Be Anything Above A Cavalryman, A Theologian Or A Corporation Director.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

There Is Always A Well-known Solution To Every Human Problem - Neat, Plausible, And Wrong.

Funny Inspirational

As Long As You Represent Me As Praising Alcohol I Shall Not Complain.

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

The Catholic Clergy Seldom Bother To Make Their Arguments Plausible; It Is Plain That They Have Little Respect For Human Intelligence, And Indeed Little Belief In Its Existence.

Richard Strauss--old Home Week In Gomorrah

I'm Ombibulous. I Drink Every Known Alcoholic Drink And Enjoy Them All.

Once A Woman Passes A Certain Point In Intelligence She Finds It Almost Impossible To Get A Husband: She Simply Cannot Go On Listening Without Snickering.

Experience Is A Poor Guide To Man, And Is Seldom Followed. What Really Teaches A Man Is Not Experience, But Observation.

Fame: An Embalmer Trembling With Stage Fright.

Self-respect - The Secure Feeling That No One, As Yet, Is Suspicious.

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.

The Genuine Music Lover May Accept The Carnal Husk Of Opera To Get At The Kernel Of Actual Music Within, But That Is No Sign That He Approves The Carnal Husk Or Enjoys Gnawing Through It.

Liberty ... Was A Two-headed Boon. There Was First, The Liberty Of The People As A Whole To Determine The Forms Of Their Own Government, To Levy Their Own Taxes, And To Make Their Own Laws.... There Was Second, The Liberty Of The Individual Man To Live His Own Life, Within The Limits Of Decency And Decorum, As He Pleased -- Freedom From The Despotism Of The Majority.

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.

A Nun, At Best, Is Only Half A Woman, Just As A Priest Is Only Half A Man.

The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates. It Is Only The Minority That Counts.

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.

[government's] Great Contribution To Human Wisdom...is The Discovery That The Taxpayer Has More Than One Pocket.

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.

For It Is An Absurdity To Call A Country Civilized In Which A Decent And Industrious Man, Laboriously Mastering A Trade Which Is Valuble And Necessary To The Common Weal, Has No Assurance That It Will Sustain Him While He Stands Ready To Practice It, Or Keep Him Out Of The Poorhouse When Illness Or Age Makes Him Idle.

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

The Net Effect Of Clarence Darrow's Great Speech Yesterday Seemed To Be Precisely The Same As If He Had Bawled It Up A Rainspout In The Interior Of Afghanistan.

On One Issue, At Least, Men And Women Agree. They Both Distrust Women.

The Average Man Does Not Get Pleasure Out Of An Idea Because He Thinks It Is True; He Thinks It Is True Because He Gets Pleasure Out Of It.

How Little It Takes To Make Life Unbearable: A Pebble In The Shoe, A Cockroach In The Spaghetti, A Woman's Laugh.

When A Candidate For Public Office Faces The Voters He Does Not Face Men Of Sense; He Faces A Mob Of Men Whose Chief Distinguishing Mark Is The Fact That They Are Quite Incapable Of Weighing Ideas, Or Even Of Comprehending Any Save The Most Elemental - Men Whose Whole Thinking Is Done In Terms Of Emotion, And Whose Dominant Emotion Is Dread Of What They Cannot Understand. So Confronted, The Candidate Must Either Bark With The Pack Or Be Lost... All The Odds Are On The Man Who Is, Intrinsically, The Most Devious And Mediocre.

Life Without Sex Might Be Safer But It Would Be Unbearably Dull

This Passion, So Unordered And Yet So Potent, Explains The Capacity For Teaching That One Frequently Observes In Scientific Men Of High Attainments In Their Specialties-for Example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted And Osler-men Who Knew Nothing Whatever About The So-called Science Of Pedagogy, And Would Have Derided Its Alleged Principles If They Had Heard Them Stated.

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.

No Democratic Delusion Is More Fatuous Than That Which Holds That All Men Are Capable Of Reason, And Hence Susceptible To Conversion By Evidence. If Religions Depended Upon Evidence For Their Prolongation, Then All Of Them Would Collapse.

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.

After All Is Said And Done, A Hell Lot Of A Lot More Is Said Than Done.

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

I Am One Of The Few Goyim Who Have Ever Actually Tackled The Talmud. I Suppose You Now Expect Me To Add That It Is A Profound And Noble Work, Worthy Of Hard Study By All Other Goyims. Unhappily, My Report Must Differ From This Expectation. It Seems To Me, Save For A Few Bright Spots, To Be Quite Indistinguishable From Rubbish.

After All, All He Did Was String Together A Lot Of Old, Well-known Quotations.

Pedagogues: More Than Any Other Class Of Blind Leaders Of The Blind They Are Responsible For The Degrading Standardization Which Now Afflicts The American People.

Conscience Is The Accumulated Sediment Of Ancestral Faint- Heartedness

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

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

Quotation Marks

The Only Really Respectable Protestants Are The Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, They Are Also Palpable Idiots.

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

When A Husband's Story Is Believed, He Begins To Suspect His Wife.

The Most Costly Of All Follies Is To Believe Passionately In The Palpably Not True. It Is The Chief Occupation Of Mankind.

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

[the] Erroneous Assumption Is To The Effect That The Aim Of Public Education Is To Fill The Young Of The Species With Knowledge And Awaken Their Intelligence, And So Make Them Fit To Discharge The Duties Of Citizenship In An Enlightened And Independent Manner. Nothing Could Be Further From The Truth. 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 And Train A Standardised Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

History Deals Mainly With Captains And Kings, Gods And Prophets, Exploiters And Despoilers, Not With Useful Men.

The Storm Center Of Lawlessness In Every American State Is The State Capitol. It Is There That The Worst Crimes Are Committed; It Is There That Lawbreaking Attains To The Estate And Dignity Of A Learned Profession; It Is There That Contempt For The Laws Is Engendered, Fostered, And Spread Broadcast.

All I Ask Is Equal Freedom. When It Is Denied, As It Always Is, I Take It Anyhow.

The Trouble With Communism Is The Communists, Just As The Trouble With Christianity Is The Christians.

It Is Not A Sign Of Communal Well-being When Men Turn To Their Government To Execute All Their Business For Them, But Rather A Sign Of Decay, As In The United States Today. The State, Indeed, Is But One Of The Devices That A Really Healthy Community Sets Up To Manage Its Affairs.

The Best Teacher Is Not The One Who Knows Most But The One Who Is Most Capable Of Reducing Knowledge To That Simple Compound Of The Obvious And Wonderful.

It Is, Indeed, One Of The Capital Tragedies Of Youth-and Youth Is The Time Of Real Tragedy-that The Young Are Thrown Mainly With Adults They Do Not Quite Respect.

Love Is An Emotion That Is Based On An Opinion Of Women That Is Impossible For Those Who Have Had Any Experience With Them.

What Is Any Political Campaign Save A Concerted Effort To Turn Out A Set Of Politicians Who Are Admittedly Bad And Put In A Set Who Are Thought To Be Better. The Former Assumption, I Believe Is Always Sound; The Latter Is Just As Certainly False. For If Experience Teaches Us Anything At All It Teaches Us This: That A Good Politician, Under Democracy, Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

He Slept More Than Any Other President, Whether By Day Or By Night. Nero Fiddled, But Coolidge Only Snored.

After All, Why Be Good? How Many Will Actually Believe It Of Us?

Happiness, Like Health, Is Probably Also Only A Passing Accident. For A Moment Or Two The Organism Is Irritated So Little That It Is Not Conscious Of It; For The Duration Of That Moment It Is Happy. Thus A Hog Is Always Happier Than A Man, And A Bacillus Is Happier Than A Hog

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.

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

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

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

The Truth Is That The Scientific Value Of Polar Exploration Is Greatly Exaggerated. The Thing That Takes Men On Such Hazardous Trips Is Really Not Any Thirst For Knowledge, But Simply A Yearning For Adventure. ... A Polar Explorer Always Talks Grandly Of Sacrificing His Fingers And Toes To Science. It Is An Amiable Pretention, But There Is No Need To Take It Seriously.

What Chiefly Distinguishes The Daily Press Is Its Incurable Fear Of Ideas, Its Constant Effort To Evade The Discussion Of Fundamentals By Translating All Issues Into A Few Elemental Fears, Its Incessant Reduction Of All Reflection To Mere Emotion.

Every Lynching Deprives Its Victim Of His Life Without Due Process Of Law, And Denies Him An Equal Protection Of The Law. The States Are Charged With Punishing All Such Invasions As The Common Rights Of The Citizens, But Some Of Them Have Failed In Their Effort To Do So, And Others Have Not Honestly Tried. Meanwhile, Lynchings Continue, And Though They Do Not Increase In Number, They Show Some Tendency To Increase In Savagery.

The Seasick Passenger On An Ocean Liner Detests The Good Sailor Who Stalks Past Him 265 Times A Day Grandly Smoking A Large, Greasy Cigar. In Precisely The Same Way The Democrat Hates The Man Who Is Having A Better Time In The World. This Is The Origin Of Democracy. It Is Also The Origin Of Puritanism.

The Final Test Of Truth Is Ridicule. Very Few Dogmas Have Ever Faced It And Survived.

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

We Must Be Willing To Pay A Price For Freedom.

In Baltimore, Soft Crabs Are Always Fried (or Broiled) In The Altogether, With Maybe A Small Jock-strap Of Bacon Added.

The Average Schoolmaster Is, And Always Must Be, An Ass.

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

A Man May Be A Fool And Not Know It, But Not If He Is Married.

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

Living With A Dog Is Easy- Like Living With An Idealist.

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 Am, In Fact, The Complete Anti-messiah, And Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Detest Missionaries. My Writings, Such As They Are, Have Had Only One Purpose: To Attain For H. L. Mencken That Feeling Of Tension Relieved And Function Achieved Which A Cow Enjoys On Giving Milk.

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

There Comes A Time In Every Man's Life When He's Consumed By The Desire To Spit On His Palms, Hoist The Black Flag And Start Cutting Throats.

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

Government, Like Any Other Organism, Refuses To Acquiesce In Its Own Extinction. This Refusal, Of Course, Involves The Resistance To Any Effort To Diminish Its Powers And Prerogatives.

The Verdict Of A Jury Is The A Priori Opinion Of That Juror Who Smokes The Worst Cigars.

When We Appropriate Money From The Public Funds To Pay For Vaccinating A Horde Of Negroes, We Do Not Do It Because We Have Any Sympathy For Them Or Because We Crave Their Blessings, But Simply Because We Don't Want Them To Be Falling Ill Of Smallpox

Life Is A Constant Oscillation Between The Sharp Horns Of Dilemmas.

The Worst Government Is Often The Most Moral. One Composed Of Cynics Is Often Very Tolerant And Humane. But When Fanatics Are On Top There Is No Limit To Oppression.

When A Private Citizen Is Robbed, A Worthy Man Is Deprived Of The Fruits Of His Industry And Thrift; When The Government Is Robbed, The Worst That Happens Is That Certain Rogues And Loafers Have Less Money To Play With Than They Had Before.

Nature Abhors A Moron.

Theology Is The Effort To Explain The Unknowable In Terms Of The Not Worth Knowing.

One Of The Main Purposes Of Laws In A Democratic Society Is To Put Burdens Upon Intelligence And Reduce It To Impotence. Ostensibly, Their Aim Is To Penalize Anti-social Acts; Actually Their Aim Is To Penalize Heretical Opinions. At Least Ninety-five Americans Out Of Every 100 Believe That This Process Is Honest And Even Laudable; It Is Practically Impossible To Convince Them That There Is Anything Evil In It. In Other Words, They Cannot Grasp The Concept Of Liberty.

A Great Nation Is Any Mob Of People Which Produces At Least One Honest Man A Century.

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

The Truth Is . . . That The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Ever Ordinarily Respectable. No Virtuous Man - That Is, Virtuous In The Ymca Sense - Has Ever Painted A Picture Worth Looking At, Or Written A Symphony Worth Hearing, Or A Book Worth Reading, And It Is Highly Improbable That The Thing Has Ever Been Done By A Virtuous Woman.

[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.

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

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.

I Have Often Argued That A Poet More Than Thirty Years Old Is Simply An Overgrown Child. I Begin To Suspect That There May Be Some Truth In It.

School Teachers, Taking Them By And Large, Are Probably The Most Ignorant And Stupid Class Of Men In The Whole Group Of Mental Workers.

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

Some Boys Go To College And Eventually Succeed In Getting Out. Others Go To College And Never Succeed In Getting Out. The Latter Are Called Professors.

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

The Great Difficulty About Keeping The Ten Commandments Is That No Man Can Keep Them And Be A Gentleman.

Such Is The Art Of Writing As Dreiser Understands It And Practices It--an Endless Piling Up Of Minutiae, An Almost Ferocious Tracking Down Of Ions, Electrons And Molecules, An Unshakable Determination To Tell It All. One Is Amazed By The Mole-like Diligence Of The Man, And No Less By His Exasperating Disregard For The Ease Of His Readers.

Voting Is Simply A Way Of Determining Which Side Is The Stronger Without Putting It To The Test Of Fighting.

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 Essence Of Self-fulfillment And Autonomous Culture Is An Unshakable Egotism.

The Fact That I Have No Remedy For All The Sorrows Of The World Is No Reason For My Accepting Yours. It Simply Supports The Strong Probability That Yours Is A Fake.

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

The Most Curious Social Convention Of The Great Age In Which We Live Is The One To The Effect That Religious Opinions Should Be Respected.

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

Anyhow, The Hole In The Donut Is At Least Digestible.

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

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty.

If There Had Been Any Formidable Body Of Cannibals In The Country, Harry Truman Would Have Promised To Provide Them With Free Missionaries Fattened At The Taxpayer's Expense.

If Women Believed In Their Husbands They Would Be A Good Deal Happier And Also A Good Deal More Foolish.

The Fact Is That The Average Man's Love Of Liberty Is Nine-tenths Imaginary, Exactly Like His Love Of Sense, Justice And Truth... Liberty Is Not A Thing For The Great Masses Of Men. It Is The Exclusive Possession Of A Small And Disreputable Minority, Like Knowledge, Courage And Honor. It Takes A Special Sort Of Man To Understand And Enjoy Liberty - And He Is Usually An Outlaw In Democratic Societies.

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.

It Is Impossible To Think Of A Man Of Any Actual Force And Originality, Universally Recognized As Having Those Qualities, Who Spent His Whole Life Appraising And Describing The Work Of Other Men.

Wife: One Who Is Sorry She Did It, But Would Undoubtedly Do It Again.

What I Admire Most In Any Man Is A Serene Spirit, A Steady Freedom From Moral Indignation, And All-embracing Tolerance--in Brief,what Is Commonly Called Sportsmanship.

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.

There Are No Institutions In America: There Are Only Fashions.

It Is The Classic Fallacy Of Our Time That A Moron Run Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Thereby Cease To Be A Moron.

If The American People Really Tire Of Democracy And Want To Make A Trial Of Fascism, I Shall Be The Last Person To Object. But If That Is Their Mood, Then They Had Better Proceed Toward Their Aim By Changing The Constitution And Not By Forgetting It.

I Believe In The Complete Freedom Of Thought And Speech - Alike For The Humblest Man And The Mightiest, And In The Utmost Freedom Of Conduct That Is Consistent With Living In Organized Society.

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

No Romantic Novel Ever Written In America, By Man Or Woman, Is One Half So Beautiful As My Ántonia.

The Most Popular Man Under A Democracy Is Not The Most Democratic Man, But The Most Despotic Man. The Common Folk Delight In The Exactions Of Such A Man. They Like Him To Boss Them. Their Natural Gait Is The Goose Step.

Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.

To Be In Love Is Merely To Be In A State Of Perceptual Anesthesia - To Mistake An Ordinary Young Woman For A Goddess.

All Government, In Its Essence, Is A Conspiracy Against The Superior Man: Its One Permanent Object Is To Oppress Him And Cripple Him.

The Learned Are Seldom Pretty Fellows, And In Many Cases Their Appearance Tends To Discourage A Love Of Study In The Young.

Here Is Something That The Psychologists Have So Far Neglected: The Love Of Ugliness For Its Own Sake, The Lust To Make The World Intolerable. Its Habitat Is The United States. Out Of The Melting Pot Emerges A Race Which Hates Beauty As It Hates Truth.

To Argue That The Gaps In Knowledge Which Confront The Seeker Must Be Filled, Not By Patient Inquiry, But By Intuition Or Revelation, Is Simply To Give Ignorance A Gratuitous And Preposterous Dignity.

How To Drink Like A Gentleman: The Things To Do And The Things Not To, As Learned In 30 Years' Extensive Research.

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.

The Federal [bank Deposit] Insurance Scheme Has Worked Up To Now Simply And Solely Because There Have Been Very Few Bank Failures. The Next Time We Have A Pestilence Of Them It Will Come To Grief Quickly Enough, And If The Good Banks Escape Ruin With The Bad Ones It Will Be Only Because The Taxpayer Foots The Bill.

I Know Of No Human Being Who Has A Better Time Than An Eager And Energetic Young Reporter.

Metaphysics Is Almost Always An Attempt To Prove The Incredible By An Appeal To The Unintelligible.

No Matter How Long He Lives, No Man Ever Becomes As Wise As The Average Woman Of Forty-eight.

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

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.

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

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