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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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If There Was Ever

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Go On Working For The Same Reason That A Hen Goes On Laying Eggs. There Is In Every Living Creature An Obscure But Powerful Impulse To Active Functioning. Life Demands To Be Lived. Inaction, Save As A Measure Of Recuperation Between Bursts Of Activity, Is Painful And Dangerous To The Healthy Organism- In Fact, It Is Almost Impossible. Only The Dying Can Be Really Idle.

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

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

A Home Is Not A Mere Transient Shelter: Its Essence Lies In The Personalities Of The People Who Live In It.

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality.

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.

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.

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

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

Never Underestimate The Bad Taste Of The American Public

Never Underestimate

The Typical American Of Today Has Lost All The Love Of Liberty, That His Forefathers Had, And All Their Disgust Of Emotion, And Pride In Self- Reliance. He Is Led No Longer By Davy Crocketts; He Is Led By Cheer Leaders, Press Agents, Word Mongers, Uplifters.

Pastor: One Employed By The Wicked To Prove To Them By His Example That Virtue Doesn't Pay.

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

Capital Punishment Has Probably Been Responsible For A Good Deal Of Human Progress. The Overwhelming Majority Of Those Executed Were Of The Sort Whose Departures For Bliss Eternal Improved The Average Intelligence And Decency Of The Race.

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

The Fact Is That The Average Man's Love Of Liberty Is Nine-tenths Imaginary, Exactly Like His Love Of Sense, Justice And Truth.

He Marries Best Who Puts It Off Until It Is Too Late.

On The One Side Was Bigotry, Ignorance, Hatred, Superstition, Every Sort Of Blackness That The Human Mind Is Capable Of. On The Other Side Was Sense.

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

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

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

All Great Religions, In Order To Escape Absurdity, Have To Admit A Dilution Of Agnosticism. It Is Only The Savage, Whether Of The African Bush Or The American Gospel Tent, Who Pretends To Know The Will And Intent Of God Exactly And Completely.

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

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

Always Remember This: If You Don't Attend The Funerals Of Your Friends, They Will Certainly Not Attend Yours.

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.

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.

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

[t]he Only Thing Wrong With Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Was That It Was The South, Not The North, That Was Fighting For A Government Of The People, By The People And For The People.

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

There Is Always A Sheet Of Paper. There Is Always A Pen. There Is Always A Way Out.

At The End Of One Millennium And Nine Centuries Of Christianity, It Remains An Unshakable Assumption Of The Law In All Christian Countries And Of The Moral Judgement Of Christians Everywhere That If A Man And A Woman, Entering A Room Together, Close The Door Behind Them, The Man Will Come Out Sadder And The Woman Wiser.

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

To The Best Of My Knowledge And Belief, The Average American Newspaper, Even Of The So-called Better Sort, Is Not Only Quite As Bad As Upton Sinclair Says It Is, But 10 Times Worse, 10 Times As Ignorant, 10 Times As Unfair And Tyrannical, 10 Times As Complaisant And Pusillanimous, And 10 Times As Devious, Hypocritical, Disingenuous, Deceitful, Pharisaical, Pecksniffian, Fraudulent, Slippery, Unscrupulous, Perfidious, Lewd And Dishonest.

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.

[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.

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

I Believe That No Discovery Of Fact, However Trivial, Can Be Wholly Useless To The Race, And That No Trumpeting Of Falsehood, However Virtuous In Intent, Can Be Anything But Vicious.

Probably The Worst Thing That Has Happened In America In My Time Is The Decay Of Confidence In The Courts. No One Can Be Sure Any More That In A Given Case They Will Uphold The Plainest Mandate Of The Constitution. On The Contrary, Everyone Begins To Be More Or Less Convinced In Advance That They Won't. Judges Are Chosen Not Because They Know The Constitution And Are In Favor Of It, But Precisely Because They Appear To Be Against It.

[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.

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

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

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

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.

There's Really No Point To Voting. If It Made Any Difference, It Would Probably Be Illegal.

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.

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

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

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

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.

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

Have You Ever Watched A Crab On The Shore Crawling Backward In Search Of The Atlantic Ocean, And Missing? That's The Way The Mind Of Man Operates.

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.

Say What You Will About The Ten Commandments, You Must Always Come Back To The Pleasant Fact That There Are Only Ten Of Them.

High-toned Humanitarians Constantly Overestimate The Sufferings Of Those They Sympathize With.

Humanitarianism

Sunday Is A Day Given Over By Americans To Wishing That The Themselves Were Dead And In Heaven, And That Their Neighbors Were Dead And In Hell.

We Must Be Prepared To Pay A Price For Freedom, For No Price That Is Ever Asked For It Is Half The Cost Of Doing Without It.

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

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.

To Wage A War For A Purely Moral Reason Is As Absurd As To Ravish A Woman For A Purely Moral Reason

The Book Of Revelation Has All The Authority, In These Theological Uplands, Of Military Orders In Time Of War. The People Turn To It For Light Upon All Their Problems, Spiritual And Secular.

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.

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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

I'm Thoroughly Convinced That Editors Don't Help Authors.

There Is Nothing Worse Than An Idle Hour, With No Occupation Offering. People Who Have Many Such Hours Are Simply Animals Waiting Docilely For Death. We All Come To That State Soon Or Late. It Is The Curse Of Senility.

Democracy Is A Pathetic Belief In The Collective Wisdom Of Individual Ignorance.

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

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

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.

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

Why Do Men Go To Zoos?

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

God Is The Immemorial Refuge Of The Incompetent, The Helpless, And The Miserable. They Find Not Only Sanctuary In His Arms, But Also A Kind Of Superiority, Soothing To Their Macerated Egos; He Will Set Them Above Their Betters.

A Sound American Is Simply One Who Has Put Out Of His Mind All Doubts And Questionings, And Who Accepts Instantly, And As Incontrovertible Gospel, The Whole Body Of Official Doctrine Of His Day, Whatever It May Be And No Matter How Often It May Change. The Instant He Challenges It, No Matter How Timorously And Academically, He Ceases By That Much To Be A Loyal And Creditable Citizen Of The Republic.

The Opera Is To Music What A Bawdy House Is To A Cathedral.

The American People, North And South, Went Into The [civil] War As Citizens Of Their Respective States, They Came Out As Subjects ... What They Thus Lost They Have Never Got Back.

The More Noisy Negro Leaders, By Depicting All Whites As Natural And Implacable Enemies To Their Race, Have Done It A Great Disservice. Large Numbers Of Whites Who Were Formerly Very Friendly To It, And Willing To Go To Great Lengths To Help It, Are Now Resentful And Suspicious.

Every Man Sees In His Relatives, And Especially In His Cousins, A Series Of Grotesque Caricatures Of Himself.

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

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.

The Americans Are The Illegitimate Children Of The English.

Illegitimate Child

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

Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

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

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.

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

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

A Tin Horn Politician With The Manner Of A Rural Corn Doctor And The Mien Of A Ham Actor

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.

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

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

The Way For Newspapers To Meet The Competition Of Radio And Television Is Simply To Get Out Better Papers.

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.

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

I Drink Exactly As Much As I Want, And One Drink More.

[texas Is] The Place Where There Are The Most Cows And The Least Milk And The Most Rivers And The Least Water In Them, And Where You Can Look The Farthest To See The Least.

The Way To Hold A Husband Is To Keep Him A Little Jealous; The Way To Lose Him Is To Keep Him A Little More Jealous.

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

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

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

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

Giving Every Man A Vote Has No More Made Men Wise And Free Than Christianity Has Made Them Good.

When A Woman Says She Won't, It's A Good Sign That She Will. And When She Says She Will, It Is An Even Better Sign.

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

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

Democracies Have

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.

Philosophy, As The Modern World Knows It, Is Only Intellectual Club-swinging.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

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.

No Married Man Is Genuinely Happy If He Has To Drink Worse Whisky Than He Used To Drink When He Was Single.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

People Say We Need Religion When What They Really Mean Is We Need Police.

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

Elections Are Futures Markets In Stolen Property.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Have Lived In One House In Baltimore For Nearly Forty-five Years. It Has Changed In That Time, As I Have - But Somehow It Still Remains The Same. No Conceivable Decorator's Masterpiece Could Give Me The Same Ease. It Is As Much A Part Of Me As My Two Hands. If I Had To Leave It I'd Be As Certainly Crippled As If I Lost A Leg.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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

Nine Out Of Ten Americans Are Actually Monarchists At Bottom. The Fact Is Proved By Their High Suseptibility To Political Claims By President's Sons And Other Relatives, Usually Nonentities.

When I Hear A Man Applauded By The Mob I Always Feel A Pang Of Pity For Him. All He Has To Do To Be Hissed Is To Live Long Enough.

There Comes A Day Of Public Ceremonial, And A Chance To Make A Speech.... A Million Voters With Iqs Below 60 Have Their Ears Glued To The Radio. It Takes Four Days' Hard Work To Concoct A Speech Without A Sensible Word In It. Next A Dam Must Be Opened Somewhere. Four Dry Senators Get Drunk And Make A Painful Scene. The Presidential Automobile Runs Over A Dog. It Rains.

Clergyman: A Ticket Speculator Outside The Gates Of Heaven.

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.

Before A Man Speaks It Is Always Safe To Assume That He Is A Fool. After He Speaks, It Is Seldom Necessary To Assume It.

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

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

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

It [the State] Has Taken On A Vast Mass Of New Duties And Responsibilities; It Has Spread Out Its Powers Until They Penetrate To Every Act Of The Citizen, However Secret; It Has Begun To Throw Around Its Operations The High Dignity And Impeccability Of A State Religion; Its Agents Become A Separate And Superior Caste, With Authority To Bind And Loose, And Their Thumbs In Every Pot. But It Still Remains, As It Was In The Beginning, The Common Enemy Of All Well-disposed, Industrious And Decent Men.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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.

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

The Martini: The Only American Invention As Perfect As The Sonnet.

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

Great Achievement

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

Men Always Try To Make Virtues Of Their Weaknesses. Fear Of Death And Fear Of Life Both Become Piety.

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.

Injustice Is Relatively Easy To Bear; What Stings Is Justice.

A Man Always Blames The Woman Who Fools Him. In The Same Way He Blames The Door He Walks Into In The Dark.

Funny Inspirational

A Gentlemen Is One Who Never Strikes A Woman Without Provocation.

Hanging One Scoundrel, It Appears, Does Not Deter The Next. Well, What Of It? The First One Is At Least Disposed Of.

People Constantly Speak Of 'the Government' Doing This Or That, As They Might Speak Of God Doing It. But The Government Is Really Nothing But A Group Of Men, And Usually They Are Very Inferior Men. They May Have Some Better Man Working For Them, But They Themselves Are Seldom Worthy Of Any Respect.

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

If There Were Only Three Women Left In The World, Two Of Them Would Immediately Convene A Court-martial To Try The Other One.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man. One May Believe In An Idea Absolutely, But Not In A Man. In The Highest Confidence There Is Always A Flavor Of Doubt--a Feeling, Half Instinctive And Half Logical, That, After All, The Scoundrel May Have Something Up His Sleeve.

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.

Great Artists Are Modest Almost As Seldom As They Are Faithful To Their Wives.

Whenever A Husband And Wife Begin To Discuss Their Marriage They Are Giving Evidence At A Coroner's Inquest.

It Is Often Argued That Religion Is Valuable Because It Makes Men Good, But Even If This Were True It Would Not Be A Proof That Religion Is True. That Would Be An Extension Of Pragmatism Beyond Endurance. Santa Claus Makes Children Good In Precisely The Same Way, And Yet No One Would Argue Seriously That The Fact Proves His Existence. The Defense Of Religion Is Full Of Such Logical Imbecilities.

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Sterling Hayden

Francis Of Assisi

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