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It Seems To Me That You Are Better Off, As A Writer And As An American, In A Small Town Than You'd Be In New York. I Thoroughly Detest New York, Though I Have To Go There Very Often.... Have You Ever Noticed That No American Writer Of Any Consequence Lives In Manhattan? Dreiser Tried It (after Many Years In The Bronx), But Finally Moved To California.

-H. L. Mencken

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It Seems To Me

H. L. Mencken

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It Seems To Me That You Are Better Off, As A Writer And As An American, In A Small Town Than You'd Be In New York. I Thoroughly Detest New York, Though I Have To Go There Very Often.... Have You Ever Noticed That No American Writer Of Any Consequence Lives In Manhattan? Dreiser Tried It (after Many Years In The Bronx), But Finally Moved To California.

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More From H. L. Mencken

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.

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.

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

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies. When They Fail To Come Off Its Clergy Simply Say That They Will Be Realized Later On. Thus, If We Have Another Boom, They Will Argue That The Collapse Of Capitalism Is Only Postponed. The Fact That The Greatest Booms Ever Heard Of Followed Marx's Formal Prophecy Of The Downfall Of Capitalism Is Already Forgotten, Just As Millions Have Long Since Forgotten The Early Christian Prophecy That The End Of The World Was At Hand. The First Christians Accepted Postponements As Docilely As The Communists Of Today.

The 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.

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

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

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

Adultery Is The Application Of Democracy To Love.

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.

Mankind Has Failed Miserably In Its Effort To Devise A Rational System Of Government. [...] The Art Of Government Is The Exclusive Possession Of Quacks And Frauds. It Has Been So Since The Earliest Days, And It Will Probably Remain So Until The End Of Time.

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.

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

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.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

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.

If A Politician Found He Had Cannibals Among His Constituents, He Would Promise Them Missionaries For Dinner.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I Am, In Fact, The Complete Anti-messiah, And Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Detest Missionaries. My Writings, Such As They Are, Have Had Only One Purpose: To Attain For H. L. Mencken That Feeling Of Tension Relieved And Function Achieved Which A Cow Enjoys On Giving Milk.

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.

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

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.

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.

There Are No Mute, Inglorious Miltons, Save In The Hallucinations Of Poets. The One Sound Test Of A Milton Is That He Functions As A Milton.

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

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

When We Appropriate Money From The Public Funds To Pay For Vaccinating A Horde Of Negroes, We Do Not Do It Because We Have Any Sympathy For Them Or Because We Crave Their Blessings, But Simply Because We Don't Want Them To Be Falling Ill Of Smallpox

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.

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.

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.

When You Sympathize With A Married Woman You Either Make Two Enemies Or Gain One Wife And One Friend.

The Truth Is That The Scientific Value Of Polar Exploration Is Greatly Exaggerated. The Thing That Takes Men On Such Hazardous Trips Is Really Not Any Thirst For Knowledge, But Simply A Yearning For Adventure. ... A Polar Explorer Always Talks Grandly Of Sacrificing His Fingers And Toes To Science. It Is An Amiable Pretention, But There Is No Need To Take It Seriously.

The Most Popular Man Under A Democracy Is Not The Most Democratic Man, But The Most Despotic Man. The Common Folk Delight In The Exactions Of Such A Man. They Like Him To Boss Them. Their Natural Gait Is The Goose Step.

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

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

All Of The Great Patriots Now Engaged In Edging And Squirming Their Way Toward The Presidency Of The Republic Run True To Form. That Is To Say, They Are All Extremely Wary, And All More Or Less Palpable Frauds. What They Want, Primarily, Is The Job; The Necessary Equipment Of Unescapable Issues, Immutable Principles And Soaring Ideals Can Wait Until It Becomes More Certain Which Way The Mob Will Be Whooping.

What Are The Characters That I Discern Most Clearly In The So-called Anglo-saxon Type Of Man? I May Answer At Once That Two Stickout Above All Others. One Is His Curious And Apparently Incurable Incompetence--his Congenital Inability To Do Any Difficult Thing Easily And Well, Whether It Be Isolating A Bacillus Or Writing A Sonata. The Other Is His Astounding Susceptibility To Fears And Alarms--in Short, His Hereditary Cowardice.... There Is No Record In History Of Any Anglo-saxon Nation Entering Upon Any Great War Without Allies.

There Is, It Appears, A Conspiracy Of Scientists Afoot. Their Purpose Is To Break Down Religion, Propagate Immorality, And So Reduce Mankind To The Level Of Brutes. They Are The Sworn And Sinister Agents Of Beelzebub, Who Yearns To Conquer The World, And Has His Eye Especially Upon Tennessee.]

Conquer The World

Equality Before The Law Is Probably Forever Unattainable. It Is A Noble Ideal, But It Can Never Be Realized, For What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

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.

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.

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

War May Make A Fool Of Man, But It By No Means Degrades Him; On The Contrary, It Tends To Exalt Him, And Its Net Effects Are Much Like Those Of Motherhood On Women.

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

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

Never Underestimate The Bad Taste Of The American Public

Never Underestimate

Poverty Is A Soft Pedal Upon The Branches Of Human Activity, Not Excepting The Spiritual.

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

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

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

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 Aim Of New Deals Is To Exterminate The Class Of Creditors And Thrust All Men Into That Of Debtors. It Is Like Trying To Breedcattle With All Cows And No Bulls.

For The Habitual Truth-teller And Truth-seeker, Indeed, The Whole World Has Very Little Liking. He Is Always Unpopular.

No One Hates His Job So Heartily As A Farmer.

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

The First Kiss Is Stolen By The Man; The Last Is Begged By The Woman.

Moral Certainty Is Always A Sign Of Cultural Inferiority. The More Uncivilized The Man, The Surer He Is That He Knows Precisely What Is Right And What Is Wrong. All Human Progress, Even In Morals, Has Been The Work Of Men Who Have Doubted The Current Moral Values, Not Of Men Who Have Whooped Them Up And Tried To Enforce Them. The Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant.

When I Die, I Shall Be Content To Vanish Into Nothingness.... No Show, However Good, Could Conceivably Be Good Forever I Do Not Believe In Immortality, And Have No Desire For It.

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.

As If Paralyzed By The National Fear Of Ideas, The Democratic Distrust Of Whatever Strikes Beneath The Prevailing Platitudes, It Evades All Resolute And Honest Dealing With What, After All, Must Be Every Healthy Literature's Elementary Materials.

[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.

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.

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

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

The Christian Church, In Its Attitude Toward Science, Shows The Mind Of A More Or Less Enlightened Man Of The Thirteenth Century. It No Longer Believes That The Earth Is Flat, But It Is Still Convinced That Prayer Can Cure After Medicine Fails.

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

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

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.

Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

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

The Mistake That Is Made Always Runs The Other Way. Because The Plain People Are Able To Speak And Understand, And Even, In Many Cases, To Read And Write, It Is Assumed That They Have Ideas In Their Heads, And An Appetite For More. This Assumption Is A Folly.

It Is Not Materialism That Is The Chief Curse Of The World, As Pastors Teach, But Idealism. Men Get Into Trouble By Taking Their Visions And Hallucinations Too Seriously.

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

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

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

Fame: An Embalmer Trembling With Stage Fright.

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

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

You Come Into The World With Nothing, And The Purpose Of Your Life Is To Make Something Out Of Nothing.

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

Kant Was Probably The Worst Writer Ever Heard Of On Earth Before Karl Marx. Some Of His Ideas Were Really Quite Simple, But He Always Managed To Make Them Seem Unintelligible. I Hope He Is In Hell.

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.

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

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

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

But I Wonder Where We Will Land If Trial Judges Begin Deciding That The Fact That A Man Has Committed An Atrocious Crime Is Proof Sufficient That He Is Not Responsible For His Acts.

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

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

The Final Test Of Truth Is Ridicule. Very Few Dogmas Have Ever Faced It And Survived.

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.

Evil Is That Which One Believes Of Others.

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

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

Popularity--the Capacity For Listening Sympathetically When Men Boast Of Their Wives And Women Complain Of Their Husbands.

Of Learned Men, The Clergy Show The Lowest Development Of Professional Ethics. Any Pastor Is Free To Cadge Customers From The Divines Of Rival Sects, And To Denounce The Divines Themselves As Theological Quacks.

Whenever "a" Attempts By Law To Impose His Moral Standards Upon "b," "a" Is Most Likely A Scoundrel.

The Worshiper Is The Father Of The Gods.

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

Thanksgiving Day

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.

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

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...

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty. If Ever A Man Is To Achieve Anything Like Dignity, It Can Happen Only If Superior Men Are Given Absolute Freedom To Think What They Want To Think And Say What They Want To Say. I Am Against Any Man And Any Organization Which Seeks To Limit Or Deny That Freedom... [and] The Superior Man Can Be Sure Of Freedom Only If It Is Given To All Men.

No Government Is Ever Really In Favor Of So-called Civil Rights. It Always Tries To Whittle Them Down. They Are Preserved Under All Governments, Insofar As They Survive At All, By Special Classes Of Fanatics, Often Highly Dubious.

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

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

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

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.

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

Quotation Marks

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

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

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

The Late William Jennings Bryan, L.l.d., Always Had One Great Advantage In Controversy; He Was Never Burdened With An Understanding Of His Opponent's Case.

The Human Race Is Divided Into Two Sharply Differentiated And Mutually Antagonistic Classes: A Smal L Minority That Plays With Ideas And Is Capable Of Taking Them In, And A Vast Majority That Finds Them Painful, And Is Thus Arrayed Against Them, And Against All Who Have Traffic With Them.

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

The Course Of The United States In World War Ii, I Said, Was Dishonest, Dishonorable, And Ignominious, And The Sunpapers, By Supporting Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, Shared In This Disgrace.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

No Healthy Man, In His Secret Heart, Is Content With His Destiny. He Is Tortured By Dreams And Images As A Child Is Tortured By The Thought Of A State Of Existence In Which It Would Live In A Candy Store And Have Two Stomachs.

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

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

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.

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.

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

The Saddest Life Is That Of A Political Aspirant Under Democracy. His Failure Is Ignominious And His Success Is Disgraceful.

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.

For It Is Mutual Trust, Even More Than Mutual Interest That Holds Human Associations Together.

Mutual Interest

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

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

Lying Is Not Only Excusable; It Is Not Only Innocent; It Is, Above All, Necessary And Unavoidable. Without The Ameliorations That It Offers, Life Would Become A Mere Syllogism And Hence Too Metallic To Be Borne.

The Ideal State For A Philosopher, Indeed, Is Celibacy Tempered By Polygamy.

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.

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.

Liberty ... Was A Two-headed Boon. There Was First, The Liberty Of The People As A Whole To Determine The Forms Of Their Own Government, To Levy Their Own Taxes, And To Make Their Own Laws.... There Was Second, The Liberty Of The Individual Man To Live His Own Life, Within The Limits Of Decency And Decorum, As He Pleased -- Freedom From The Despotism Of The Majority.

School Days, I Believe, Are The Unhappiest In The Whole Span Of Human Existence. They Are Full Of Dull, Unintelligible Tasks, New And Unpleasant Ordinances, Brutal Violations Of Common Sense And Common Decency. It Doesn't Take A Reasonably Bright Boy Long To Discover That Most Of What Is Rammed Into Him Is Nonsense, And That No One Really Cares Very Much Whether He Learns It Or Not.

Courtroom : A Place Where Jesus Christ And Judas Iscariot Would Be Equals, With The Betting Odds Favoring Judas.

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.

That It Should Still Be Necessary, At This Late Stage In The Senility Of The Human Race To Argue That Women Have A Fine And Fluent Intelligence Is Surely An Eloquent Proof Of The Defective Observation, Incurable Prejudice, And General Imbecility Of Their Lords And Masters.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

America's Biggest Failure Is Its Inability To Take Comedy Seriously.

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

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.

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.

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

Consider Him In His Highest Incarnation: The University Professor. What Is His Function? Simply To Pass On To Fresh Generations Of Numskulls A Body Of So-called Knowledge That Is Fragmentary, Unimportant, And, In Large Part, Untrue. His Whole Professional Activity Is Circumscribed By The Prejudices, Vanities And Avarices Of His University Trustees, I.e., A Committee Of Soap-boilers, Nail Manufacturers, Bank-directors And Politicians. The Moment He Offends These Vermin He Is Undone. He Cannot So Much As Think Aloud Without Running A Risk Of Having Them Fan His Pantaloons.

A Skeptic As To All Ideas, Including Especially My Own, I Have Never Suffered A Pang When The Ideas Of Some Other Imbecile Prevailed.

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

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

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

All Government, In Its Essence, Is A Conspiracy Against The Superior Man: It's One Permanent Object Is To Oppress Him And Cripple Him... One Of Its Primary Functions Is To Regiment Men By Force, To Make Them As Much Alike As Possible And As Dependent Upon One Another As Possible, To Search Out And Combat Originality Among Them.

The Penalty For Laughing In A Courtroom Is Six Months In Jail; If It Were Not For This Penalty, The Jury Would Never Hear The Evidence.

The Plain People, Hereafter As In The Past, Will Continue To Make Their Own Language, And The Best That Grammarians Can Do Is To Follow After It, Haltingly, And Not Often With Much Insight Into It.

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.

The Movies Today Are Too Rich To Have Any Room For Genuine Artists. They Produce A Few Passable Craftsmen, But No Artists. Can You Imagine A Beethoven Making $100, 000 A Year?

Men Have A Much Better Time Of It Than Women. For One Thing, They Marry Later; For Another Thing, They Die Earlier.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

Jealousy Is The Theory That Some Other Fellow Has Just As Little Taste.

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

Change Is Not Progress.

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

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

University Professors

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.

Here The Only Genuine Conflict Is Between True Believers. Of A Given Text In Holy Writ One Faction May Say This Thing And Another That, But Both Agree Unreservedly That The Text Itself Is Impeccable, And Neither In The Midst Of The Most Violent Disputation Would Venture To Accuse The Other Of Doubt. To Call A Man A Doubter In These Parts Is Equal To Accusing Him Of Cannibalism. Even The Infidel Scopes Himself Is Not Charged With Any Such Infamy.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If There Had Been Any Formidable Body Of Cannibals In The Country, Harry Truman Would Have Promised To Provide Them With Free Missionaries Fattened At The Taxpayer's Expense.

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

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.

Poetry Has Done Enough When It Charms, But Prose Must Also Convince.

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

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

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

Creator: A Comedian Whose Audience Is Afraid To Laugh.

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.

The Average Man Never Really Thinks From End To End Of His Life. The Mental Activity Of Such People Is Only A Mouthing Of Clichés.

The One Permanent Emotion Of The Inferior Man Is Fear - Fear Of The Unknown, The Complex, The Inexplicable. What He Wants Above Everything Else Is Safety.

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

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