Background Image

...

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.

-H. L. Mencken

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Five Years Of Prohibition

H. L. Mencken

...

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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From H. L. Mencken

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

I Never Lecture, Not Because I Am Shy Or A Bad Speaker, But Simply Because I Detest The Sort Of People Who Go To Lectures And Don't Want To Meet Them.

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

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

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

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.

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly. He Is Like A Watch Of Which The Most That Can Be Said Is That Its Cosmetic Effect Is Good.

Let's Not Burn The Universities Yet. After All, The Damage They Do Might Be Worse.

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

The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

I Think The Negro People Should Feel Secure Enough By Now To Face A Reasonable Ridicule Without Terror. I Am Unalterably Opposed To All Efforts To Put Down Free Speech, Whatever The Excuse.

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 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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Liberty And Democracy Are Eternal Enemies, And Every One Knows It Who Has Ever Given Any Sober Reflection To The Matter.

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.

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.

Evil Is That Which One Believes Of Others.

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

I Believe That It Should Be Perfectly Lawful To Print Even Things That Outrage The Pruderies And Prejudices Of The General, So Long As Any Honest Minority, However Small, Wants To Read Them. The Remedy Of The Majority Is Not Prohibition, But Avoidance.

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

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

Evil: That Which One Believes Of Others. It Is A Sin To Believe Evil Of Others, But It Is Seldom A Mistake

Unsuccessful Candidates For The Presidency Should Be Quietly Hanged As A Matter Of Public Sanitation And Decorum.

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

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

The Average Man's Love Of Liberty Is Nine-tenths Imaginary, Exactly Like His Love Of Sense, Justice And Truth... It Takes A Special Sort Of Man To Understand And Enjoy Liberty - And He Is Usually An Outlaw In Democratic Societies.

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

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

Christian - One Who Is Willing To Serve Three Gods, But Draws The Line At One Wife.

The Theory Behind Representative Government Is That Superior Men-or At Least Men Not Inferior To The Average In Ability And Integrity-are Chosen To Manage The Public Business, And That They Carry On This Work With Reasonable Intelligence And Honest. There Is Little Support For That Theory In Known Facts.

What Reason Is There For Believing That A High Death Rate, In Itself, Is Undesirable? To My Knowledge None Whatever. The Plain Fact Is That, If It Be Suitably Selective, It Is Extremely Salubrious. Suppose It Could Be So Arranged That It Ran To 100% A Year Among Politicians, Executive Secretaries, Drive Chairmen, And The Homicidally Insane? What Rational Man Would Object?

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

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

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.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

The Legislature, Like The Executive, Has Ceased To Be Even The Creature Of The People: It Is The Creature Of Pressure Groups, And Most Of Them, It Must Be Manifest, Are Of Dubious Wisdom And Even More Dubious Honesty. 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. The Typical Lawmaker Of Today Is A Man Wholly Devoid Of Principle...

The Only Way That A Government Can Provide For Jobs For All Citizens Is By Deciding What Every Man Should Do.

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

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.

There Is No Record In The History Of A Nation That Ever Gained Anything Valuable By Being Unable To Defend Itself.

[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.

Life Without Sex Might Be Safer But It Would Be Unbearably Dull. It Is The Sex Instinct Which Makes Women Seem Beautiful, Which They Are Once In A Blue Moon, And Men Seem Wise And Brave, Which They Never Are At All. Throttle It, Denaturalize It, Take It Away, And Human Existence Would Be Reduced To The Prosaic, Laborious, Boresome, Imbecile Level Of Life In An Anthill.

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 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.

The Idea That Leisure Is Of Value In Itself Is Only Conditionally True. The Average Man Simply Spends His Leisure As A Dog Spends It. His Recreations Are All Puerile, And The Time Supposed To Benefit Him Really Only Stupefies Him.

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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

If There Was Ever A Dissenter From The National Optimismit Was Surely Edgar Allan Poe--without Question The Bravest And Mostoriginal, If Perhaps Also The Least Orderly And Judicious, Of All The Critics That We Have Produced.

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.

And What Is A Good Citizen? Simply One Who Never Says, Does Or Thinks Anything That Is Unusual. Schools Are Maintained In Order To Bring This Uniformity Up To The Highest Possible Point. A School Is A Hopper Into Which Children Are Heaved While They Are Still Young And Tender; Therein They Are Pressed Into Certain Standard Shapes And Covered From Head To Heels With Official Rubber-stamps.

There Are No Dull Subjects. There Are Only Dull Writers.

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

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

When Fanatics Are On Top There Is No Limit To Oppression.

Temptation Is A Woman's Weapon And Man's Excuse.

Human Life Is Basically A Comedy. Even Its Tragedies Often Seem Comic To The Spectator, And Not Infrequently They Actually Have Comic Touches To The Victim. Happiness Probably Consists Largely In The Capacity To Detect And Relish Them. A Man Who Can Laugh, If Only At Himself, Is Never Really Miserable.

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's No Underestimating The Intelligence Of The American Public.

Nine Times Out Of Ten, In The Arts As In Life, There Is Actually No Truth To Be Discovered; There Is Only Error To Be Exposed.

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.

What Fetched Me Instantly (and Thousands Of Other Newcomers With Me) Was The Subtle But Unmistakable Sense Of Escape From The United States.

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

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.

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.

The Government Consists Of A Gang Of Men Exactly Like You And Me. They Have, Taking One With Another, No Special Talent For The Business Of Government; They Have Only A Talent For Getting And Holding Office.

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

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

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

The 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.

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.

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

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

Original Thought

No Sane Man Objects To Palpable Lies About Him; What He Objects To Is Damaging Facts.

A Large Part Of Altruism, Even When It Is Perfectly Honest, Is Grounded Upon The Fact That It Is Uncomfortable To Have Unhappy People About One.

Science, At Bottom, Is Really Anti-intellectual. It Always Distrusts Pure Reason, And Demands The Production Of Objective Fact.

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

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

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.

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

All The Great Enterprises Of The World Are Run By A Few Smart Men: Their Aides And Associates Run Down By Rapid Stages To The Level Of Sheer Morons. Everyone Knows That This Is True Of Government, But We Often Forget That It Is Equally True Of Private Undertakings. In The Average Great Bank, Or Railroad, Or Other Corporation The Burden Of Management Lies Upon A Small Group. The Rest Are Ciphers.

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.

What Restrains Us From Killing Is Partly Fear Of Punishment, Partly Moral Scruple, And Partly What May Be Described As A Sense Of Humor

There Is No Possibility Whatsoever Of Reconciling Science And Theology, At Least In Christendom. Either Jesus Arose From The Dead Or He Didn't. If He Did, Then Christianity Becomes Plausible; If He Did Not, Then It Is Sheer Nonsense. I Defy Any Genuine Scientists To Say That He Believes In The Resurrection, Or Indeed In Any Other Cardinal Dogma Of The Christian System.

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

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.

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

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

Change Is Not Progress.

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

A Bad Man Is The Sort Who Weeps Every Time He Speaks Of A Good Woman.

No One In This World, So Far As I Know - And I Have Searched The Records For Years, And Employed Agents To Help Me - Has Ever Lost Money By Underestimating The Intelligence Of The Great Masses Of The Plain People.

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.

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

The Highfalutin Aims Of Democracy, Whether Real Or Imaginary, Are Always Assumed To Be Identical With Its Achievements. This, Of Course, Is Sheer Hallucination. Not One Of Those Aims, Not Even The Aim Of Giving Every Adult A Vote, Has Been Realized. It Has No More Made Men Wise And Free Than Christianity Has Made Them Good.

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.

A Man Who Is An Agnostic By Inheritance, So That He Doesn't Remember Any Time That He Wasn't, Has Almost No Hatred For The Religious.

Unionism, Seldom If Ever, Uses Such Powers As It Has To Ensure Better Work; Almost Always It Devotes A Large Part Of That Power To Safeguard Bad Work.

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.

The Older I Get The More I Admire And Crave Competence, Just Simple Competence, In Any Field From Adultery To Zoology.

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

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

A Bad Artist Almost Always Tries To Conceal His Incompetence By Whooping Up A New Formula.

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

The Americans Are The Illegitimate Children Of The English.

Illegitimate Child

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

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.

The Common Notion That Free Speech Prevails In The United States Always Makes Me Laugh.

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. Is It, Perchance, Cherished By Persons Who Should Know Better? Then Their Folly Should Be Brought Out Into The Light Of Day, And Exhibited There In All Its Hideousness Until They Flee From It, Hiding Their Heads In Shame.

Politics, As Hopeful Men Practise It In The World, Consists Mainly Of The Delusion That A Change In Form Is A Change In Substance.

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

A Cynic Is A Man Who, When He Smells Flowers, Looks Around For A Coffin Or When He Sees Silver He Looks For The Cloud It Lines. A Wise Happy Person Does The Exact Opposite.

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.

No One Ever Heard Of The Truth Being Enforced By Law. When The Secular Is Called In To Sustain An Idea, Whether New Or Old, It Is Always A Bad Idea, And Not Infrequently It Is Downright Idiotic.

There Is, In Fact, Nothing About Religious Opinions That Entitles Them To Any More Respect Than Other Opinions Get. On The Contrary, They Tend To Be Noticeably Silly.

Others Opinions

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.

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

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.

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 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.

What Are The Hallmarks Of A Competent Writer Of Fiction? The First, It Seems To Me, Is That He Should Be Immensely Interested In Human Beings, And Have An Eye Sharp Enough To See Into Them, And A Hand Clever Enough To Draw Them As They Are. The Second Is That He Should Be Able To Set Them In Imaginary Situations Which Display The Contents Of Their Psyches Effectively, And So Carry His Reader Swiftly And Pleasantly From Point To Point Of What Is Called A Good Story.

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.

During Many A Single Week, I Daresay, More Money Is Spent In New York Upon Useless And Evil Things Than Would Suffice To Run The Kingdom Of Denmark For A Year.

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

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

All Government, Of Course, Is Against Liberty.

Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Balloonists Have An Unsurpassed View Of The Scenery, But There Is Always The Possibility That It May Collide With Them.

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

He Who Eats Alone Chokes Alone.

A Government At Bottom Is Nothing More Than A Group Of Men, And As A Practical Matter Most Of Them Are Inferior Men. ... Yet These Nonentities, By The Intellectual Laziness Of Men In General ... Are Generally Obeyed As A Matter Of Duty (and) Assumed To Have A Kind Of Wisdom That Is Superior To Ordinary Wisdom.

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.

...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.

There Is Always An Easy Solution To Every Problem - Neat, Plausible, And Wrong.

Simple Solutions

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.

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

Every Reader Of The Dreiser Novels Must Cherish Astounding Specimens--of Awkward, Platitudinous Marginalia, Of Whole Scenes Spoiled By Bad Writing, Of Phrases As Brackish As So Many Lumps Of Sodium Hyposulphite.

There Is Only One Justification For Having Sinned, And That Is To Be Glad Of It.

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

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

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

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.

Under Democracy One Party Always Devotes Its Chief Energies To Trying To Prove That The Other Party Is Unfit To Rule—and Both Commonly Succeed, And Are Right.

Even A Superstitious Man Has Certain Inalienable Rights: The Right To Harbor And Indulge His Imbecilities, Provided Only That He Does Not Try To Inflict Them Upon Others By Force; He Has The Right To Argue For Them As Eloquently As He Can. But He Has No Right To Be Protected From The Criticism Of Those Who Do Not Hold Them. He Has No Right To Demand That They Be Treated As Sacred. He Has No Right To Preach Them Without Challenge.

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

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

A Man's Women Folk, Whatever Their Outward Show Of Respect For His Merit And Authority, Always Regard Him Secretly As An Ass, And With Something Akin To Pity. His Most Gaudy Sayings And Doings Seldom Deceive Them; They See The Actual Man Within, And Know Him For A Shallow And Pathetic Fellow. In This Fact, Perhaps, Lies One Of The Best Proofs Of Feminine Intelligence, Or, As The Common Phrase Makes It, Feminine Intuition.

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

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

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.

Clergyman: A Ticket Speculator Outside The Gates Of Heaven.

[thomas Henry] Huxley, I Believe, Was The Greatest Englishman Of The Nineteenth Century—perhaps The Greatest Englishman Of All Time. When One Thinks Of Him, One Thinks Inevitably Of Such Men As Goethe And Aristotle. For In Him There Was That Rich, Incomparable Blend Of Intelligence And Character, Of Colossal Knowledge And High Adventurousness, Of Instinctive Honesty And Indomitable Courage Which Appears In Mankind Only Once In A Blue Moon. There Have Been Far Greater Scientists, Even In England, But There Has Never Been A Scientist Who Was A Greater Man.

Firmness In Decision Is Often Merely A Form Of Stupidity. It Indicates An Inability To Think The Same Thing Out Twice.

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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.

Women Have A Hard Enough Time In This World: Telling Them The Truth Would Be Too Cruel.

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.

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 Book Of Genesis, A Farrago Of Nonsense So Wholly Absurd That Even Sunday-school Scholars Have To Be Threatened With Hell To Make Them Accept It.

I Write In Order To Attain That Feeling Of Tension Relieved And Function Achieved Which A Cow Enjoys On Giving Milk.

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

Man's Objection To Love Is That It Dies Hard: Women's, That When It Is Dead It Stays Dead.

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

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

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.

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

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 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 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.

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

The More I Think You Over, The More It Comes Home To Me What An Unmitigated Middle Victorian Ass You Are!

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

The Pedant And The Priest Have Always Been The Most Expert Of Logicians - And The Most Diligent Disseminators Of Nonsense And Worse.

Every Election Is A Sort Of Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

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

Platitude: An Idea (a) That Is Admitted To Be True By Everyone, And (b) That Is Not True.

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

Democracy Turns Upon And Devours Itself. Universal Suffrage, In Theory The Palladium Of Our Liberties, Becomes The Assurance Of Our Slavery. And That Slavery Will Grow More And More Abject And Ignoble As The Differential Birth Rate, The Deliberate Encouragement Of Mendicancy And The Failure Of Popular Education Produce A Larger And Larger Mass Of Prehensile Half-wits, And So Make The Demagogues More And More Secure.

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."

It Is Surely No Mere Coincidence That The Land Of The Emancipated And Enthroned Woman Is Also The Land Of Canned Soup, Of Canned Pork And Beans, Of Whole Meals In Cans, And Of Everything Else Ready Made.

Trending Author

Afrika Bambaataa

Pope John Paul II

Rachel Griffiths

Jawaharlal Nehru

Amanda Seyfried

Category