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

-H. L. Mencken

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For It Is An

H. L. Mencken

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

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Genius: The Ability To Prolong One's Childhood.

The True Bureaucrat Is A Man Of Really Remarkable Talents. He Writes A Kind Of English That Is Unknown Elsewhere In The World, And An Almost Infinite Capacity For Forming Complicated And Unworkable Rules.

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

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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.

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.

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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.

I Know A Good Many Men Of Great Learning-that Is, Men Born With An Extraordinary Eagerness And Capacity To Acquire Knowledge. One And All, They Tell Me That They Can't Recall Learning Anything Of Any Value In School. All That Schoolmasters Managed To Accomplish With Them Was To Test And Determine The Amount Of Knowledge That They Had Already Acquired Independently-and Not Infrequently The Determination Was Made Clumsily And Inaccurately.

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

No Matter How Much A Woman Loved A Man, It Would Still Give Her A Glow To See Him Commit Suicide For Her.

...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.

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.

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

A Galileo Could No More Be Elected President Of The United States Than He Could Be Elected Pope Of Rome. Both High Posts Are Reserved For Men Favored By God With An Extraordinary Genius For Swathing The Bitter Facts Of Life In Bandages Of Self-illusion.

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.

I Give You Chicago. It Is Not London And Harvard. It Is Not Paris And Buttermilk. It Is American In Every Chitling And Sparerib. It Is Alive From Snout To Tail.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant, In This Field As In All Others. His Culture Is Based On 'i Am Not Too Sure'.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

To Believe That Russia Has Got Rid Of The Evils Of Capitalism Takes A Special Kind Of Mind. It Is The Same Kind Of Mind That Believes That A Holy Roller Has Got Rid Of Sin.

Every Autobiography ... Becomes An Absorbing Work Of Fiction, With Something Of The Charm Of A Cryptogram.

In The Duel Of Sex Woman Fights From A Dreadnought And Man From An Open Raft.

The Older I Grow The More I Distrust The Familiar Doctrine That Age Brings Wisdom.

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

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

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out... Without Regard To The Prevailing Superstitions And Taboos. Almost Inevitably He Comes To The Conclusion That The Government He Lives Under Is Dishonest, Insane, Intolerable.

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

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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.

Syllogisms а La Mode - If You Are Against Labor Racketeers, Then You Are Against The Working Man. If You Are Against Demagogues, Then You Are Against Democracy. If You Are Against Christianity, Then You Are Against God. If You Are Against Trying A Can Of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, Then You Are In Favor Of Letting Uncle Julius Die.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Clergyman: A Ticket Speculator Outside The Gates Of Heaven.

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

Never Underestimate The Booberie Of The Booboisie.

Never Underestimate

Henry James Would Have Been Vastly Improved As A Novelist By A Few Whiffs Of The Chicago Stockyard.

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

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.

Who Ever Heard, Indeed, Of An Autobiography That Was Not (interesting)? I Can Recall None In All The Literature Of The World

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

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

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

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 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.

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

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

It Takes No More Actual Sagacity To Carry On The Everyday Hawking And Haggling Of The World, Or To Ladle Out Its Normal Doses Of Bad Medicine And Worse Law, Than It Takes To Operate A Taxicab Or Fry A Pan Of Fish.

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.

If I Ever Mary, It Will Be On A Suddn Impulse - As Aman Shoots Himself

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

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

I've Made It A Rule Never To Drink By Daylight And Never To Refuse A Drink After Dark.

Happiness Is Peace After Strife, The Overcoming Of Difficulties, The Feeling Of Security And Well-being. The Only Really Happy Folk Are Married Women And Single Men.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Formula Of The Argument Is Simple And Familiar: To Dispose Of A Problem All That Is Necessary Is To Deny That It Exists.

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.

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

Of Government, At Least In Democratic States, It May Be Said Briefly That It Is An Agency Engaged Wholesale, And As A Matter Of Solemn Duty, In The Performance Of Acts Which All Self-respecting Individuals Refrain From As A Matter Of Common Decency.

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.

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."

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.

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

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

Why Writers Write I Do Not Know. As Well Ask Why A Hen Lays An Egg Or Why A Cow Stands Patiently While An Underprivileged Farmer Burglarizes Her.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

There Are Some People Who Read Too Much: The Bibliobibuli.

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.

I Believe That Religion, Generally Speaking, Has Been A Curse To Mankind - That Its Modest And Greatly Overestimated Services On The Ethical Side Have Been More Than Overcome By The Damage It Has Done To Clear And Honest Thinking.

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

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.

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

I Believe There Is A Limit Beyond Which Free Speech Cannot Go, But It's A Limit That's Very Seldom Mentioned. It's The Point Where Free Speech Begins To Collide With The Right To Privacy. I Don't Think There Are Any Other Conditions To Free Speech. I've Got A Right To Say And Believe Anything I Please, But I Haven't Got A Right To Press It On Anybody Else. .... Nobody's Got A Right To Be A Nuisance To His Neighbors.

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

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

[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.

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

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

In Any Combat Between A Rogue And A Fool The Sympathy Of Mankind Is Always With The Rogue.

Only To Often On Meeting Scientific Men, Even Those Of Genuine Distiction, One Finds That They Are Dull Fellows And Very Stupid. They Know One Thing To Excess; They Know Nothing Else. Pursuing Facts Too Doggedly And Unimaginatively, They Miss All The Charming Things That Are Not Facts. ... Too Much Learning, Like Too Little Learning, Is An Unpleasant And Dangerous Thing.

Writing Books Is Certainly A Most Unpleasant Occupation. It Is Lonesome, Unsanitary, And Maddening. Many Authors Go Crazy.

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

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

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

The Chief Value Of Money Lies In The Fact That One Lives In A World In Which It Is Overestimated.

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.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

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

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

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

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

The Harsh, Useful Things Of The World, From Pulling Teeth To Digging Potatoes, Are Best Done By Men Who Are As Starkly Sober As So Many Convicts In The Death-house, But The Lovely And Useless Things, The Charming And Exhilarating Things, Are Best Done By Men With, As The Phrase Is, A Few Sheets In The Wind.

[science] Must Be Amoral By Its Very Nature: The Minute It Begins Separating Facts Into The Two Categories Of Good Ones And Bad Ones It Ceases To Be Science And Becomes A Mere Nuisance, Like Theology.

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.

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

In This World Of Sin And Sorrow There Is Always Something To Be Thankful For; As For Me, I Rejoice That I Am Not A Republican.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Chief Knowledge That's Man On From Reading Books Is The Knowledge That Very Few Of Them Are Worth Reading.

We Must Respect The Other Fellow's Religion, But Only In The Sense And To The Extent That We Respect His Theory That His Wife Is Beautiful And His Children Smart.

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

No Man Of Honor Ever Quite Lives Up To His Code, Any More Than A Moral Man Manages To Avoid Sin.

Governments, Whatever Their Pretensions Otherwise, Try To Preserve Themselves By Holding The Individual Down ... Government Itself, Indeed, May Be Reasonably Defined As A Conspiracy Against Him. Its One Permanent Aim, Whatever Its Form, Is To Hobble Him Sufficiently To Maintain Itself.

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

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

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

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. Their Principal Device To That End Is To Search Out Groups Who Pant And Pine For Something They Can't Get And To Promise To Give It To Them. Nine Times Out Of Ten That Promise Is Worth Nothing. The Tenth Time Is Made Good By Looting A To Satisfy B. In Other Words, Government Is A Broker In Pillage, And Every Election Is Sort Of An Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

Nothing Can Come Out Of An Artist That Is Not In The Man.

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

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

Religion Is A Conceited Effort To Deny The Most Obvious Realities.

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.

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.

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

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

In War The Heroes Always Outnumber The Soldiers Ten To One.

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

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.

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

[art Is] An Attempt To Escape From Life.

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 Natural Tendency Of Every Government Is To Grow Steadily Worse-that Is, To Grow More Satisfactory To Those Who Constitute It And Less Satisfactory To Those Who Support It.

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

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.

The Real Charm Of The United States Is That It Is The Only Comic Country Ever Heard Of.

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

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

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

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

In The United States, Doing Good Has Come To Be, Like Patriotism, A Favorite Device Of Persons With Something To Sell.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Bachelors Know More About Women Than Married Men; If They Didn't They'd Be Married Too.

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.

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

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

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

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

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

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

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

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

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

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

I Well Recall My Horror When I Heard For The First Time, Of A Journalist Who Had Laid In A Pair Of What Were Then Called Bicycle Pants And Taken To Golf; It Was As If I Had Encountered A Studhorse With His Hair Done Up In Frizzes, And Pink Bowknots Peeking Out Of Them. It Seemed, In Some Vague Way, Ignominious, And Even A Bit Indelicate.

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

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

Thanksgiving Day Is A Day Devoted By Persons With Inflammatory Rheumatism To Thanking A Loving Father That It Is Not Hydrophobia.

Thanksgiving Day

So Few Men Are Really Worth Knowing, That It Seems A Shameful Waste To Let An Anthropoid Prejudice Stand In The Way Of Free Association With One Who Is.

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

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

Wife: A Former Sweetheart.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Absence Is The Dark-room In Which Lovers Develop Negatives.

A Politician Normally Prospers Under Democracy In Proportion ... As He Excels In The Invention Of Imaginary Perils And Imaginary Defenses Against Them.

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

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

Setting Aside The Vast Herd Which Shows No Definable Character At All, It Seems To Me That The Minority Distinguished By What Is Commonly Regarded As An Excess Of Sin Is Very Much More Admirable Than The Minority Distinguished By An Excess Of Virtue. My Experience Of The World Has Taught Me That The Average Wine-bibbler Is A Far Better Fellow Than The Average Prohibitionist, And That The Average Rogue Is Better Company Than The Average Poor Drudge, And That The Worst White-slave Trader Of My Acquaintance Is A Decenter Man Than The Best Vice Crusader.

Capitalism Undoubtedly Has Certain Boils And Blotches Upon It, But Has It As Many As Government? Has It As Many As Marriage? Has It As Many As Religion? I Doubt It. It Is The Only Basic Institution Of Modern Man That Shows Any Genuine Health And Vigor.

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.

My Guess Is That Well Over Eighty Per Cent. Of The Human Race Goes Through Life Without Having A Single Original Thought.

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

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

The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

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.

Democracy Is Also A Form Of Worship. It Is The Worship Of Jackals By Jackasses.

Democracies Have

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