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At A Time When The Respectable Bourgeois Youngsters Of My Generation Were College Freshmen, Oppressed By Simian Sophomores And Affronted With Balderdash Daily And Hourly By Chalky Pedagogues, I Was At Large In A Wicked Seaport Of Half A Million People, With A Front Seat At Every Public Show, As Free Of The Night As Of Day, And Getting Earfuls Of Instruction In A Hundred Giddy Arcana, None Of Them Taught In Schools.... [but] If I Neglected The Humanities, I Was Meanwhile Laying In All The Worldly Wisdom Of A Police Lieutenant, A Bartender, A Shyster Lawyer, Or A Midwife.

-H. L. Mencken

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At A Time When

H. L. Mencken

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At A Time When The Respectable Bourgeois Youngsters Of My Generation Were College Freshmen, Oppressed By Simian Sophomores And Affronted With Balderdash Daily And Hourly By Chalky Pedagogues, I Was At Large In A Wicked Seaport Of Half A Million People, With A Front Seat At Every Public Show, As Free Of The Night As Of Day, And Getting Earfuls Of Instruction In A Hundred Giddy Arcana, None Of Them Taught In Schools.... [but] If I Neglected The Humanities, I Was Meanwhile Laying In All The Worldly Wisdom Of A Police Lieutenant, A Bartender, A Shyster Lawyer, Or A Midwife.

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Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality. It Is Impossible To Find A Hygienist Who Does Not Debase His Theory Of The Healthful With A Theory Of The Virtuous. ... The Aim Of Medicine Is Surely Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices.

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

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.

This Combat Between Proletariat And Plutocracy Is, After All, Itself A Civil War. Two Inferiorities Struggle For The Privilege Of Polluting The World.

Hamlet Has Been Played By 5,000 Actors, No Wonder He Is Crazy.

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies.

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, 10 Times As Ignorant, 10 Times As Unfair And Tyrannical, 10 Times As Complaisant And Pusillanimous, And 10 Times As Devious, Hypocritical, Disingenuous, Deceitful, Pharisaical, Pecksniffian, Fraudulent, Slippery, Unscrupulous, Perfidious, Lewd And Dishonest.

The Only Good Bureaucrat Is One With A Pistol At His Head. Put It In His Hand And It's Good-bye To The Bill Of Rights.

I Go On Working For The Same Reason That A Hen Goes On Laying Eggs.

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

A Sunday School Is A Prison In Which Children Do Penance For The Evil Conscience Of Their Parents.

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

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

The Urge To Save Humanity Is Almost Always A False Front For The Urge To Rule.

If I Had My Way, Any Man Guilty Of Golf Would Be Ineligible For Any Office Of Trust In The United States.

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

It Is Not The Drinker, But The Man Who Has Just Stopped Drinking, Who Thinks The World Is Going To The Dogs.

The Law Is A Sort Of Hocus-pocus Science That Smiles In Your Face While It Picks Your Pocket.

To Large Numbers Of American Citizens Life In Certain Parts Of The Country Becomes Intolerably Hazardous. They May Be Seized On Any Pretext, However Flimsy, And Put To Death With Horrible Tortures. No Government Pretending To Be Civilized Can Go On Condoning Such Atrocities. Either It Must Make Every Possible Effort To Put Them Down Or It Must Suffer The Scorn And Contempt Of Christendom.

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.

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

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

[t]here Is Only One Sound Argument For Democracy, And That Is The Argument That It Is A Crime For Any Man To Hold Himself Out As Better Than Other Men, And, Above All, A Most Heinous Offense For Him To Prove It.

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.

A Woman Usually Respects Her Father, But Her View Of Her Husband Is Mingled With Contempt, For She Is Of Course Privy To The Transparent Devices By Which She Snared Him.

It Seems To Me That Society Usually Wins. There Are, To Be Sure, Free Spirits In The World, But Their Freedom, In The Last Analysis, Is Not Much Greater Than That Of A Canary In A Cage. They May Leap From Perch To Perch; They May Bathe And Guzzle At Their Will; They May Flap Their Wings And Sing. But They Are Still In The Cage, And Soon Or Late It Conquers Them.

The Priest, Realistically Considered, Is The Most Immoral Of Men, For He Is Always Willing To Sacrifice Every Other Sort Of Good To The One Good Of His Arcanum - The Vague Body Of Mysteries That He Calls The Truth.

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

The So-called Philosophy Of India Is Even More Blowsy And Senseless Than The Metaphysics Of The West. It Is At War With Everything We Know Of The Workings Of The Human Mind, And With Every Sound Idea Formulated By Mankind. If It Prevailed In The Whole Modern World We'd Still Be In The Thirteenth Century; Nay, We'd Be Back Among The Egyptians Of The Pyramid Age. Its Only Coherent Contribution To Western Thought Has Been Theosophy-and Theosophy Is As Idiotic As Christian Science. It Has Absolutely Nothing To Offer A Civilized White Man.

The Public, With Its Mob Yearning To Be Instructed, Edified And Pulled By The Nose, Demands Certainties; It Must Be Told Definitely And A Bit Raucously That This Is True And That Is False. But There Are No Certainties.

What I Got In Sunday School ... Was Simply A Firm Conviction That The Christian Faith Was Full Of Palpable Absurdities, And The Christian God Preposterous.... The Act Of Worship, As Carried On By Christians, Seems To Me To Be Debasing Rather Than Ennobling. It Involves Groveling Before A Being Who, If He Really Exists, Deserves To Be Denounced Instead Of Respected.

A Metaphysician Is One Who, When You Remark That Twice Two Makes Four, Demands To Know What You Mean By Twice, What By Two, What By Makes, And What By Four. For Asking Such Questions Metaphysicians Are Supported In Oriental Luxury In The Universities, And Respected As Educated And Intelligent Men.

No Man Could Bring Himself To Reveal His True Character, And, Above All, His True Limitations As A Citizen And A Christian, His True Meannesses, His True Imbecilities, To His Friends, Or Even To His Wife. Honest Autobiography Is Therefore A Contradiction In Terms: The Moment A Man Considers Himself, Even In Petto, He Tries To Gild And Fresco Himself. Thus A Man's Wife, However Realistic Her View Of Him, Always Flatters Him In The End, For The Worst She Sees In Him Is Appreciably Better, By The Time She Sees It, Than What Is Actually There.

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

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

The Truth That Survives Is Simply The Lie That Is Pleasantest To Believe.

The Effect Of Every Sort Of New Deal Is To Increase And Prosper The Criminal Class. It Teaches Precisely What All Professional Criminals Believe, To Wit, That, It Is Neither Virtuous Nor Necessary To Suffer And To Do Without.

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

When I Mount The Scaffold At Last These Will Be My Farewell Words To The Sheriff: Say What You Will Against Me When I Am Gone, But Don't Forget To Add, In Common Justice, That I Was Never Converted To Anything.

The Intelligent, Like The Unintelligent, Are Responsive To Propaganda.

Never Argue With A Man Whose Job Depends On Not Being Convinced.

The Only Way For A Reporter To Look At A Politician Is Down.

My Belief In Free Speech Is So Profound That I Am Seldom Tempted To Deny It To The Other Fellow. Nor Do I Make Any Effort To Differentiate Between The Other Fellow Right And That Other Fellow Wrong, For I Am Convinced That Free Speech Is Worth Nothing Unless It Includes A Full Franchise To Be Foolish And Even...malicious.

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

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.

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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

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

Journalism Is To Politician As Dog Is To Lamp-post.

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.

A Man Of Active And Resilient Mind Outwears His Friendships Just As Certainly As He Outwears His Love Affairs, His Politics And His Epistemology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Capitalism Under Democracy Has A Further Advantage: Its Enemies, Even When It Is Attacked, Are Scattered And Weak, And It Is Usually Easily Able To Array One Half Of Them Against The Other Half, And Thus Dispose Of Both.

Democracies Have

Temptation Is An Irresistible Force At Work On A Movable Body.

The Physical Business Of Writing Is Unpleasant To Me, But The Psychic Satisfaction Of Discharging Bad Ideas In Worse English Makes Me Forget It.

The Fact Is That Liberty, In Any True Sense, Is A Concept That Lies Quite Beyond The Reach Of The Inferior Man's Mind. And No Wonder, For Genuine Liberty Demands Of Its Votaries A Quality He Lacks Completely, And That Is Courage. The Man Who Loves It Must Be Willing To Fight For It; Blood, Said Jefferson, Is Its Natural Manure. Liberty Means Self-reliance, It Means Resolution, It Means The Capacity For Doing Without . . . The Average Man Doesn't Want To Be Free. He Wants To Be Safe.

The Jews Could Be Put Down Very Plausibly As The Most Unpleasant Race Ever Heard Of. As Commonly Encountered They Lack Any Of The Qualities That Mark The Civilized Man: Courage, Dignity, Incorruptibility, Ease, Confidence. They Have Vanity Without Pride, Voluptuousness Without Taste, And Learning Without Wisdom. Their Fortitude, Such As It Is, Is Wasted Upon Puerile Objects, And Their Charity Is Mainly A Form Of Display.

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.

A National Political Campaign Is Better Than The Best Circus Ever Heard Of, With A Mass Baptism And A Couple Of Hangings Thrown In.

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

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

One May No More Live In The World Without Picking Up The Moral Prejudices Of The World Than One Will Be Able To Go To Hell Without Perspiring.

Alimony - The Ransom That The Happy Pay To The Devil.

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

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

College Football Is A Game Which Would Be Much More Interesting If The Faculty Played Instead Of The Students, And Even More Interesting If The Trustees Played. There Would Be A Great Increase In Broken Arms, Legs, And Necks, And Simultaneously An Appreciable Diminution In The Loss To Humanity.

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.

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

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

To Denounce Moralizing Out Of Hand Is To Pronounce A Moral Judgment.

No One Hates His Job So Heartily As A Farmer.

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.

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.

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

Politics, Under A Democracy, Reduces Itself To A Mere Struggle For Office By Flatterers Of The Proletariat; Even When A Superior Man Prevails At That Disgusting Game He Must Prevail At The Cost Of His Self-respect. Not Many Superior Men Make The Attempt. The Average Great Captain Of The Rabble, When He Is Not Simply A Weeper Over Irremediable Wrongs, Is A Hypocrite So Far Gone That He Is Unconscious Of His Own Hypocrisy.. A Slimy Fellow, Offensive To The Nose.

Save Among Politicians It Is No Longer Necessary For Any Educated American To Profess Belief In Thirteenth Century Ideas

The Essence Of A Sound Style Is That It Cannot Be Reduced To Rules-that It Is A Living And Breathing Thing With Something Of The Devilish In It-that It Fits Its Proprietor Tightly Yet Ever So Loosely, As His Skin Fits Him. It Is, In Fact, Quite As Seriously An Integral Part Of Him As That Skin Is. . . . In Brief, A Style Is Always The Outward And Visible Symbol Of A Man, And Cannot Be Anything Else.

If What I May Believe - About Gall-stones, The Constitution, Castor Oil, Or God - Is Conditioned By Law, Then I Am Not A Free Man.

The Great Achievement Of Liberal Protestantism Was To Make God Boring.

Great Achievement

Better Than The Rest Of Us, They [the Jews] Sensed What Was Ahead For Their People.

Liberty Is Not For These Slaves; I Do Not Advocate Inflicting It Against Their Conscience. On The Contrary, I Am Strongly In Favor Of Letting Them Crawl And Grovel All They Please Before Whatever Fraud Or Combination Of Frauds They Choose To Venerate...our Whole Practical Government Is Grounded In Mob Psychology And The Boobus Americanus Will Follow Any Command That Promises To Make Him Safer.

To The Extent That I Am Genuinely Educated, I Am Suspicious Of All The Things That The Average Citizen Believes And The Average Pedagogue Teaches.

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.

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

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

Osteopath--one Who Argues That All Human Ills Are Caused By The Pressure Of Hard Bone Upon Soft Tissue. The Proof Of His Theory Isto Be Found In The Heads Of Those Who Believe It.

The Difference Between A Moral Man And A Man Of Honor Is That The Latter Regrets A Discreditable Act, Even When It Has Worked And He Has Not Been Caught.

The Editors Are Committed To Nothing Save This: To Keep Common Sense As Fast As They Can, To Belabor Sham As Agreeably As Possible, To Give Civilized Entertainment.

It Is The Dull Man Who Is Always Sure, And The Sure Man Who Is Always Dull.

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.

Each Party Steals So Many Articles Of Faith From The Other, And The Candidates Spend So Much Time Making Each Other's Speeches, That By The Time Election Day Is Past There Is Nothing Much To Do Save Turn The Sitting Rascals Out And Let A New Gang In.

We Are Here And It Is Now. Further Than That, All Human Knowledge Is Moonshine.

The Jews Fastened Their Religion Upon The Western World, Not Because It Was More Reasonable Than The Religions Of Their Contemporaries - As A Matter Of Fact, It Was Vastly Less Reasonable Than Many Of Them - But Because It Was Far More Poetical.

For Every Problem, There Is A Solution That Is Simple, Neat, And Wrong.

There Is, In Fact, No Reason To Believe That Any Given Natural Phenomenon, However Marvelous It May Seem Today, Will Remain Forever Inexplicable. Soon Or Late The Laws Governing The Production Of Life Itself Will Be Discovered In The Laboratory, And Man May Set Up Business As A Creator On His Own Account. The Thing, Indeed, Is Not Only Conceivable; It Is Even Highly Probable.

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. All Human Progress, Even In Morals, Has Been The Work Of Men Who Have Doubted The Current Moral Values, Not Of Men Who Have Whooped Them Up And Tried To Enforce Them. The Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant.

No Reporter Of My Generation, Whatever His Genius, Ever Really Rated Spats And A Walking Stick Until He Had Covered Both A Lynching And A Revolution.

In The Main, There Are Two Sorts Of Books: Those That No One Reads And Those That No One Ought To Read.

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.

The Notion That Artists Flourish Upon Adversity And Misunderstanding, That They Are Able To Function To The Utmost In An Atmosphere Of Indifference Or Hostility - This Notion Is Nine-tenths Nonsense.

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.

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.

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

It Is Almost As Safe To Assume That An Artist Of Any Dignity Is Against His Country, I.e., Against The Environment In Which God Hath Placed Him, As It Is To Assume That His Country Is Against The Artist.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

It Is Difficult To Imagine Anyone Having Any Real Hopes For The Human Race In The Face Of The Fact That The Great Majority Of Men Still Believe That The Universe Is Run By A Gaseous Vertebrate Of Astronomical Heft And Girth, Who Is Nevertheless Interested In The Minutest Details Of The Private Conduct Of Even The Meanest Man.

The Whole Drift Of Our Law Is Toward The Absolute Prohibition Of All Ideas That Diverge In The Slightest Form From The Accepted Platitudes, And Behind That Drift Of Law There Is A Far More Potent Force Of Growing Custom, And Under That Custom There Is A Natural Philosophy Which Erects Conformity Into The Noblest Of Virtues And The Free Functioning Of Personality Into A Capital Crime Against Society.

Conscience Is The Accumulated Sediment Of Ancestral Faint- Heartedness

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

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

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

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.

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

The Only Really Happy Folk Are Married Women And Single Men.

To Every Complex Question There Is A Simple Answer And It Is Wrong.

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.

Women Hate Revolutions And Revolutionists. They Like Men Who Are Docile, And Well-regarded At The Bank, And Never Late At Meals.

Philosophy Consists Very Largely Of One Philosopher Arguing That All Others Are Jackasses. He Usually Proves It, And I Should Add That He Also Usually Proves That He Is One Himself.

The Average Man Does Not Want To Be Free. He Simply Wants To Be Safe.

The Dying Man Doesn't Struggle Much And He Isn't Much Afraid. As His Alkalies Give Out He Succumbs To A Blest Stupidity. His Mindfogs. His Will Power Vanishes. He Submits Decently. He Scarcely Gives A Damn.

Immorality: The Morality Of Those Who Are Having A Better Time.

It Was Morality That Burned The Books Of The Ancient Sages, And Morality That Halted The Free Inquiry Of The Golden Age And Substituted For It The Credulous Imbecility Of The Age Of Faith. It Was A Fixed Moral Code And A Fixed Theology Which Robbed The Human Race Of A Thousand Years By Wasting Them Upon Alchemy, Heretic-burning , Witchcraft And Sacerdotalism.

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.

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

There Is No Record In Human History Of A Happy Philosopher: They Exist Only In Romantic Legend.

There Is A Saying In Baltimore That Crabs May Be Prepared In Fifty Ways And That All Of Them Are Good.

Good Government Is That Which Delivers The Citizen From Being Done Out Of His Life And Property Too Arbitrarily And Violently-one That Relieves Him Sufficiently From The Barbaric Business Of Guarding Them To Enable Him To Engage In Gentler, More Dignified, And More Agreeable Undertakings.

The Ideal Government Of All Reflective Men, From Aristotle Onward, Is One Which Lets The Individual Alone - One Which Barely Escapes Being No Government At All.

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

Without A Doubt There Are Women Who Would Vote Intelligently. There Are Also Men Who Knit Socks Beautifully.

The State Is Not Force Alone. It Depends Upon The Credulity Of Man Quite As Much As Upon His Docility. Its Aim Is Not Merely To Make Him Obey, But Also To Make Him Want To Obey.

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

One Yearns Unspeakably For A Composer Who Gives Out His Pair Of Honest Themes, And Then Develops Them Unashamed, And Then Hangs A Brisk Coda To Them, And Then Shuts Up.

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.

The Basic Fact About Human Existence Is Not That It Is A Tragedy, But That It Is A Bore. It Is Not So Much A War As An Endless Standing In Line.

As For Lindbergh, Another Eminent Servant Of Science, All He Proved By His Gaudy Flight Across The Atlantic Was That God Takes Care Of Those Who Have Been So Fortunate As To Come Into The World Foolish. Expressing Skepticism That Adventure Does Not Necessarily Contribute To Scientific Knowledge.

Imagine The Creator As A Low Comedian, And At Once The World Becomes Explicable.

One Of The Most Mawkish Of Human Delusions Is The Notion That Friendship Should Be Eternal, Or, At All Events, Life-long, And That Any Act Which Puts A Term To It Is Somehow Discreditable.

What We Need In This Country Is A General Improvement In Eating. We Have The Best Raw Materials In The World, Both Quantitatively And Qualitatively, But Most Of Them Are Ruined In The Process Of Preparing Them For The Table.

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.

Our Whole Practical Government Is Grounded In Mob Psychology And The Boobus Americanus Will Follow Any Command That Promises To Make Him Safer.

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.

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

Decision Making

Truth Would Quickly Cease To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Once We Got As Used To It.

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

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.

The Art Of Writing, Like The Art Of Love, Runs All The Way From A Kind Of Routine Hard To Distinguish From Piling Bricks To A Kind Of Frenzy Closely Related To Delirium Tremens.

Here Is One Of The Fundamental Defects Of American Fiction--perhaps The One Character That Sets It Off Sharply From All Other Known Kinds Of Contemporary Fiction. It Habitually Exhibits, Not A Man Of Delicate Organization In Revolt Against The Inexplicable Tragedy Of Existence, But A Man Of Low Sensibilities And Elemental Desires Yielding Himself Gladly To His Environment, And So Achieving What, Under A Third-rate Civilization, Passes For Success. To Get On: This Is The Aim. To Weigh And Reflect, To Doubt And Rebel: This Is The Thing To Be Avoided.

Contemporary Fiction

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

The Men The American People Admire Most Extravagantly Are The Most Daring Liars; The Men They Detest Most Violently Are Those Who Try To Tell Them The Truth.

Morality Is Doing What Is Right, No Matter What You Are Told. Religion Is Doing What You Are Told, No Matter What Is Right.

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.

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.

The Psychologists And The Metaphysicians Wrangle Endlessly Over The Nature Of The Thinking Process In Man, But No Matter How Violently They Differ Otherwise They All Agree That It Has Little To Do With Logic And Is Not Much Conditioned By Overt Facts.

There Is In Writing The Constant Joy Of Sudden Discovery, Of Happy Accident.

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

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.

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.

The Wholly Manly Man Lacks The Wit Necessary To Give Objective Form To His Soaring And Secret Dreams, And The Wholly Womanly Woman Is Apt To Be Too Cynical A Creature To Dream At All.

The Motive Of Fear Is The Be-all And End-all Of Religion.

Strike An Average Between What A Woman Thinks Of Her Husband A Month Before She Marries Him And What She Thinks Of Him A Year Afterward, And You Will Have The Truth About Him.

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.

No Article Of Faith Is Proof Against The Disintegrating Effects Of Increasing Information; One Might Almost Describe The Acquirement Of Knowledge As A Process Of Disillusion.

Of All The Human Qualities, The One I Admire The Most Is Competence. A Tailor Who Is Really Able To Cut And Fit A Coat Seems To Me An Admirable Man, And By The Same Token A University Professor Who Knows Little Or Nothing Of The Thing He Presumes To Teach Seems To Me To Be A Fraud And A Rascal.

University Professors

Chopin--two Embalmers At Work Upon A Minor Poetthe Scent Of Tuberosesautumn Rain.

The Essential Dilemma Of Education Is To Be Found In The Fact That The Sort Of Man (or Woman) Who Knows A Given Subject Sufficiently Well To Teach It Is Usually Unwilling To Do So.

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

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.

The Liberation Of The Human Mind Has Never Been Furthered By Dunderheads; It Has Been Furthered By Gay Fellows Who Heaved Dead Cats Into Sanctuaries And Then Went Roistering Down The Highways Of The World, Proving To All Men That Doubt, After All, Was Safe - That The God In The Sanctuary Was Finite In His Power And Hence A Fraud. One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

The Worst Of Marriage Is That It Makes A Woman Believe That All Men Are Just As Easy To Fool.

Every Complex Problem Has A Simple Solution That Doesn't Work.

The Great Secret Of Happiness In Love Is To Be Glad That The Other Fellow Married Her.

No Politician Is Ever Benefited By Saving Money; It Is Spending It That Makes Him.

The Two Main Ideas That Run Through All Of My Writing, Whether It Be Literary Criticism Or Political Polemic Are These: I Am Strong In Favor Of Liberty And I Hate Fraud.

A Dull, Dark, Depressing Day In Winter: The Whole World Looks Like A Methodist Church At Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.

Those Tragic Comedians, The Chamber Of Commerce Red Hunters, The Women's Christian Temperance Union Smellers, The Censors Of Books, The Klan Regulators, The Methodist Prowlers, The Baptist Guardians Of Sacred Vessels-we Have The National Mentality Of A Police Lieutenant.

It Is Common To Assume That Human Progress Affects Everyone - That Even The Dullest Man, In These Bright Days, Knows More Than Any Man Of, Say, The Eighteenth Century, And Is Far More Civilized. This Assumption Is Quite Erroneous. . . . The Great Masses Of Men, Even In This Inspired Republic, Are Precisely Where The Mob Was At The Dawn Of History. They Are Ignorant, They Are Dishonest, They Are Cowardly, They Are Ignoble. They Know Little If Anything That Is Worth Knowing, And There Is Not The Slightest Sign Of A Natural Desire Among Them To Increase Their Knowledge.

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

The Scientist Who Yields Anything To Theology, However Slight, Is Yielding To Ignorance And False Pretenses, And As Certainly As If He Granted That A Horse-hair Put Into A Bottle Of Water Will Turn Into A Snake.

When Women Kiss It Always Reminds One Of Prize Fighters Shaking Hands.

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

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

All The Political Seers And Sorcerers Seem To Be Agreed That The Coming Presidential Campaign Will Be Full Of Bitterness, And That Most Of It Will Be Caused By Religion. I Count Prohibition As A Part Of Religion, For It Has Surely Become So In The United States. The Prohibitionists, Seeing All Their Other Arguments Destroyed By The Logic Of Events, Have Fallen Back Upon The Mystical Doctrine That God Is Somehow On Their Side, And That Opposing Them Thus Takes On The Character Of Blasphemy.

Here Is Tragedy - And Here Is America. For The Curse Of The Country, As Well Of All Democracies, Is Precisely The Fact That It Treats Its Best Men As Enemies. The Aim Of Our Society, If It May Be Said To Have An Aim, Is To Iron Them Out. The Ideal American, In The Public Sense, Is A Respectable Vacuum.

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

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.

Progress: The Process Whereby The Human Race Has Got Rid Of Whiskers, The Vermiform Appendix And God.

The Townspeople Are Morons, Yokels, Peasants And Genus Homo Boobiensis...surrounded By Gaping Primates From The Upland Vallies.

Change Is Not Progress.

Kipling, The Grandson Of A Methodist Preacher, Reveals The Tin-pot Evangelist With Increasing Clarity As Youth And Its Ribaldries Pass Away And He Falls Back Upon His Fundamentals.

Bridges Would Not Be Safer If Only People Who Knew The Proper Definition Of A Real Number Were Allowed To Design Them.

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