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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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Communism, Like Any Other

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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The State Remains, As It Was In The Beginning, The Common Enemy Of All Well-disposed, Industrious And Decent Men.

No Married Woman Ever Trusts Her Husband Absolutely, Nor Does She Ever Act As If She Did Trust Him. Her Utmost Confidence Is As Wary As An American Pickpocket's Confidence That The Policeman On The Beat Will Stay Bought.

Who Will Argue That 98.6 Farenheit Is The Right Temperature For Man? As For Me, I Decline To Do It. It May Be That We Are All Actually Freezing Hence The Pervading Stupidity Of Mankind. At 110 Or 115 Degrees Even Archbishops Might Be Intelligent.

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

The Life Of Man In This World Is Like The Life Of A Fly In A Room Filled With 100 Boys, Each Armed With A Fly-swatter.

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

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.

What Ass First Let Loose The Doctrine That The Suffrage Is A High Boon And Voting A Noble Privilege?

[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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Some Time Ago A Publisher Told Me That There Are Four Kinds Of Books That Seldom, If Ever, Lose Money In The United States--first,murder Stories; Secondly, Novels In Which The Heroine Is Forcibly Overcome By The Hero; Thirdly, Volumes On Spiritualism, Occultism And Other Such Claptrap, And Fourthly, Books On Lincoln.

One Of The Laudable By-products Of The Freudian Quackery Is The Discovery That Lying, In Most Cases, Is Involuntary And Inevitable--that The Liar Can No More Avoid It Than He Can Avoid Blinking His Eyes When A Light Flashes Or Jumping When A Bomb Goes Off Behind Him.

Man Weeps To Think That He Will Die So Soon; Woman, That She Was Born So Long Ago.

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.

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

The Curse Of Man, And The Cause Of Nearly All His Woe, Is His Stupendous Capacity For Believing The Incredible.

Lawyer: One Who Protects Us Against Robbery By Taking Away The Temptation.

Every Normal Man Must Be Tempted, At Times, To Spit On His Hands, Hoist The Black Flag, And Begin Slitting Throats.

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

People Do Not Expect To Find Chastity In A Whorehouse. Why, Then, Do They Expect To Find Honesty And Humanity In Government, A Congeries Of Institutions Whose Modus Operandi Consists Of Lying, Cheating, Stealing, And If Need Be, Murdering Those Who Resist?

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

If X Is The Population Of The United States And Y Is The Degree Of Imbecility Of The Average American, Then Democracy Is The Theory That X Times Y Is Less Than Y

Time Is A Great Legalizer, Even In The Field Of Morals

Government, In Its Very Essence, Is Opposed To All Increase In Knowledge. Its Tendency Is Always Towards Permanence And Against Change...[t]he Progress Of Humanity, Far From Being The Result Of Government, Has Been Made Entirely Without Its Aid And In The Face If Its Constant And Bitter Opposition.

It Is Inaccurate To Say That I Hate Everything. I Am Strongly In Favor Of Common Sense, Common Honesty, And Common Decency. This Makes Me Forever Ineligible For Public Office.

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

Life May Not Be Exactly Pleasant, But It Is At Least Not Dull. Heave Yourself Into Hell Today, And You May Miss, Tomorrow Or Next Day, Another Scopes Trial, Or Another War To End War, Or Perchance A Rich And Buxom Widow With All Her First Husband's Clothes. There Are Always More Hardings Hatching. I Advocate Hanging On As Long As Possible.

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.

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

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

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

The Believing Mind Is Externally Impervious To Evidence. The Most That Can Be Accomplished With It Is To Induce It To Substitute One Delusion For Another. It Rejects All Overt Evidence As Wicked.

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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.

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

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Democracies Have

Dachshund: A Half-a-dog High And A Dog-and-a-half Long.

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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

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

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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.

I Do Not Believe In Democracy, But I Am Perfectly Willing To Admit That It Provides The Only Really Amusing Form Of Government Ever Endured By Mankind.

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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.

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Haste Is Of The Devil. Slowness Is Of God.

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

There Are Two Kinds Of Music; German Music And Bad Music.

Man Is The Yokel Par Excellence, The Booby Unmatchable, The King Dupe Of The Cosmos. He Is Chronically And Unescapably Deceived, Not Only By The Other Animals And By The Delusive Face Of Nature Herself--by His Incomparable Talent For Searching Out And Embracing What Is False, And For Overlooking And Denying What Is True.

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

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The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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.

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.

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

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

It Takes A Long While For A Naturally Trustful Person To Reconcile Himself To The Idea That After All God Will Not Help Him

Long Distance Relationship

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.

A Man Full Of Faith Is Simply One Who Has Lost The Capacity For Clear And Realistic Thought.

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.

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.

Looking For An Honest Politician Is Like Looking For An Ethical Burglar.

Man Is Never Honestly The Fatalist, Nor Even The Stoic. He Fights His Fate, Often Desperately. He Is Forever Entering Bold Exceptions To The Rulings Of The Bench Of Gods. This Fighting, No Doubt, Makes For Human Progress, For It Favors The Strong And The Brave. It Also Makes For Beauty, For Lesser Men Try To Escape From A Hopeless And Intolerable World By Creating A More Lovely One Of Their Own.

The Plain Fact Is That Education Is Itself A Form Of Propaganda - A Deliberate Scheme To Outfit The Pupil, Not With The Capacity To Weigh Ideas, But With A Simple Appetite For Gulping Ideas Ready-made. The Aim Is To Make 'good' Citizens, Which Is To Say, Docile And Uninquisitive Citizens.

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

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.

Friendship Is A Common Belief In The Same Fallacies, Mountebanks And Hobgoblins.

When Somebody Says It’s Not About The Money, It’s About The Money.

It Is A Peculiarity Of The American Mind That It Regards Any Excursion Into The Truth As An Adventure Into Cynicism.

Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want, And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.

Democracies Have

Wife: A Former Sweetheart.

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.

The Essence Of Science Is That It Is Always Willing To Abandon A Given Idea For A Better One; The Essence Of Theology Is That It Holds Its Truths To Be Eternal And Immutable.

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.

...no Man Of Genuinely Superior Intelligence Has Ever Been An Actor. Even Supposing A Young Man Of Appreciable Mental Powers To Be Lured Upon The Stage, As Philosophers Are Occasionally Lured Into Bordellos, His Mind Would Be Inevitably And Almost Immediately Destroyed By The Gaudy Nonsense Issuing From His Mouth Every Night.

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

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.

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

Quotation Marks

Never Let Your Inferiors Do You A Favor - It Will Be Extremely Costly.

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

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

The University President Who Cashiered Every Professor Unwilling To Support Woodrow Wilson For The First Vacancy In The Trinity. . . .

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

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

All American Wars (except The Civil War) Have Been Fought With The Odds Overwhelmingly In Favor Of The Americans. In The History Of Armed Combat Such Affairs As The Mexican And Spanish-american Wars Must Be Ranked, Not As Wars At All, But As Organized Assassinations. In The Two World Wars, No American Faced A Bullet Until His Adversaries Had Been Worn Down By Years Of Fighting Others.

Man Is A Natural Polygamist: He Always Has One Woman Leading Him By The Nose, And Another Hanging On To His Coattails.

The American People, Taking One With Another, Constitute The Most Timorous, Snivelling, Poltroonish, Ignominious Mob Of Serfs And Goosesteppers Ever Gathered Under One Flag In Christendom Since The End Of The Middle Ages.

Since The Early Days, [the Church] Has Thrown Itself Violently Against Every Effort To Liberate The Body And Mind Of Man. It Has Been, At All Times And Everywhere, The Habitual And Incorrigible Defender Of Bad Governments, Bad Laws, Bad Social Theories, Bad Institutions. It Was, For Centuries, An Apologist For Slavery, As It Was An Apologist For The Divine Right Of Kings.

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.

Evangelical Christianity, As Everyone Knows, Is Founded Upon Hate, As The Christianity Of Christ Was Founded Upon Love.

Democracy Is The Art And Science Of Running The Circus From The Monkey Cage.

We Have Had More Brilliant Presidents Than Cleveland, And One Or Two Who Were Considerably More Profound, But We Have Never Had One, At Least Since Washington, Whose Fundamental Character Was Solider And More Admirable.

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.

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

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

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

Philadelphia Is The Most Pecksniffian Of American Cities, And Thus Probably Leads The World.

Debussy--a Pretty Girl With One Blue Eye And One Brown One.

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 Way To Deal With Superstition Is Not To Be Polite To It, But To Tackle It With All Arms, And So Rout It, Cripple It, And Make It Forever Infamous And Ridiculous.

In Every Woman's Life There Is One Real And Consuming Love. But Very Few Women Guess Which One It Is.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

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

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

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

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.

Whenever A Annoys Or Injures B On The Pretense Of Saving Or Improving X, A Is A Scoundrel.

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.

Civilization, In Fact, Grows More Maudlin And Hysterical; Especially Under Democracy It Tends To Degenerate Into A Mere Combat Of Crazes; The Whole Aim Of Practical Politics Is To Keep The Populace Alarmed (and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety) By An Endless Series Of Hobgoblins, Most Of Them Imaginary. Wars Are No Longer Waged By The Will Of Superior Men, Capable Of Judging Dispassionately And Intelligently The Causes Behind Them And The Effects Flowing Out Of Them. The Are Now Begun By First Throwing A Mob Into A Panic; They Are Ended Only When It Has Spent Its Ferine Fury.

It Is Impossible To Imagine The Universe Run By A Wise, Just And Omnipotent God, But It Is Quite Easy To Imagine It Run By A Board Of Gods.

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

Most People Are Unable To Write Because They Are Unable To Think, And They Are Unable To Think Because They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Do So, Just As They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Fly Over The Moon.

Well, I Tell You, If I Have Been Wrong In My Agnosticism, When I Die I'll Walk Up To God In A Manly Way And Say, Sir, I Made An Honest Mistake.

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

Democracy The Domination Of Unreflective And Timorous Men, Moved In Vast Herds By Mob Conditions.

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.

Culture Itself Is Neither Education Nor Law-making: It Is An Atmosphere And A Heritage.

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

Is It Hot In The Rolling Mill? Are The Hours Long? Is $15 A Day Not Enough? Then Escape Is Easy. Simply Throw Up Your Job, Spit On Your Hands, And Write Another "rosenkavailer."

A Professor Must Have A Theory As A Dog Must Have Fleas.

The Fact That A Human Brain Of High Amperage, Otherwise Highly Efficient, May Have A Hole In It Is Surely Not A Secret.

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

Love, To The Inferior Man, Remains Almost Wholly A Physical Matter. The Heroine He Most Admires Is The One Who Offers The Grossest Sexual Provocation; The Hero Who Makes His Wife Roll Her Eyes Is A Perambulating Phallus.

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.

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.

The True Function Of Art Is To Criticize, Embellish And Edit Nature… The Artist Is A Sort Of Impassioned Proof-reader, Blue Penciling The Bad Spelling Of God.

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

If, After I Depart This Vale, You Ever Remember Me And Have Thought To Please My Ghost, Forgive Some Sinner And Wink Your Eye At Some Homely Girl.

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

The American People, I Am Convinced, Really Detest Free Speech. At The Slightest Alarm They Are Ready And Eager To Put It Down.

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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.

Under The Pressure Of Fanaticism, And With The Mob Complacently Applauding The Show, Democratic Law Tends More And More To Be Grounded Upon The Maxim That Every Citizen Is, By Nature, A Traitor, A Libertine, And A Scoundrel. In Order To Dissuade Him From His Evil-doing The Police Power Is Extended Until It Surpasses Anything Ever Heard Of In The Oriental Monarchies Of Antiquity.

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

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 The Theory Of All Modern Civilized Governments That They Protect And Foster The Liberty Of The Citizen; It Is The Practice Of All Of Them To Limit Its Exercise, And Sometimes Very Narrowly.

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.

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

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.

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

A Great Literature Is Thus Chiefly The Product Of Doubting And Inquiring Minds In Revolt Against The Immovable Certainties Of The Nation.

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.

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

The Average Man Gets His Living By Such Depressing Devices That Boredom Becomes A Sort Of Natural State To Him.

The Only Kind Of Freedom That The Mob Can Imagine Is Freedom To Annoy And Oppress Its Betters, And That Is Precisely The Kind That We Mainly Have.

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.

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

Unquestionably, There Is Progress. The Average American Now Pays Out Twice As Much In Taxes As He Formerly Got In Wages.

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.

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.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

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.

No Man Is Worthy Of Unlimited Reliance-his Treason, At Best, Only Waits For Sufficient Temptation.

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.

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.

Faith May Be Defined Briefly As An Illogical Belief In The Occurrence Of The Improbable.... A Man Full Of Faith Is Simply One Who Has Lost (or Never Had) The Capacity For Clear And Realistic Thought. He Is Not A Mere Ass: He Is Actually Ill.

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

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

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.

The Older I Grow The Less I Esteem Mere Ideas. In Politics, Particularly, They Are Transient And Unimportant. . . . There Are Only Men Who Have Character And Men Who Lack It.

I Hate Sports The Way People Who Like Sports Hate Common Sense.

The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal.

The Chief Difference Between Free Capitalism And State Socialism Seems To Be This: That Under The Former A Man Pursues His Own Advantage Openly, Frankly And Honestly, Whereas Under The Latter He Does So Hypocritically And Under False Pretenses.

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

[government] Is Apprehended, Not As A Committee Of Citizens Chosen To Carry On The Communal Business Of The Whole Population, But As A Separate And Autonomous Corporation, Mainly Devoted To Exploiting The Population For The Benefit Of Its Own Members.

All Of The American's Foreign Wars Have Been Fought With Foes Either Too Weak To Resist Them Or Too Heavily Engaged Elsewhere To Make More Than A Half-hearted Attempt. The Combats With Mexico And Spain Were Not Wars; They Were Simply Lynchings.

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