Background Image

...

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.

-H. L. Mencken

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Man Is Never Honestly

H. L. Mencken

...

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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From H. L. Mencken

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.

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

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

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

Liberty Is Of Small Value To The Lower Third Of Humanity. They Greatly Prefer Security, Which Means Protection By Some Class Above Them. They Are Always In Favor Of Despots Who Promise To Feed Them. The Only Liberty An Inferior Man Really Cherishes Is The Liberty To Quit Work, Stretch Out In The Sun, And Scratch Himself.

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

A Mood Of Constructive Criticism Being Upon Me, I Propose Forthwith That The Method Of Choosing Legislators Now Prevailing In The United States Be Abandoned And That The Method Used In Choosing Juries Be Substituted. That Is To Say, I Propose That The Men Who Make Our Laws Be Chosen By Chance And Against Will Of All The Rest Of Us, As Now.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

What Is The Professor's Function? To Pass On To Numskulls A Body Of So-called Knowledge That Is Fragmentary, Unimportant, And Largely Untrue.

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

The Art Of Politics, Under Democracy, Is Simply The Art Of Ringing It. Two Branches Reveal Themselves. There Is The Art Of The Demagogue, And There Is The Art Of What May Be Called, By A Shot-gun Marriage Of Latin And Greek, The Demaslave. They Are Complementary, And Both Of Them Are Degrading To Their Practitioners. The Demagogue Is One Who Preaches Doctrines He Knows To Be Untrue To Men He Knows To Be Idiots. The Demaslave Is One Who Listens To What These Idiots Have To Say And Then Pretends That He Believes It Himself.

A Man Loses His Sense Of Direction After Four Drinks; A Woman Loses Hers After Four Kisses.

Funny Valentines Day

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

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

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

There Are Some People Who Read Too Much: The Bibliobibuli. I Know Some Who Are Constantly Drunk On Books, As Other Men Are Drunk On Whiskey Or Religion. They Wander Through This Most Diverting And Stimulating Of Worlds In A Haze, Seeing Nothing And Hearing Nothing.

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

The Music Critic, Huneber, Could Never Quite Make Up His Mind About A New Symphony Until He Had Seen The Composer's Mistress.

Any Man Who Afflicts The Human Race With Ideas Must Be Prepared To See Them Misunderstood.

When A Candidate For Public Office Faces The Voters He Does Not Face Men Of Sense; He Faces A Mob Of Men Whose Chief Distinguishing Mark Is The Fact That They Are Quite Incapable Of Weighing Ideas, Or Even Of Comprehending Any Save The Most Elemental - Men Whose Whole Thinking Is Done In Terms Of Emotion, And Whose Dominant Emotion Is Dread Of What They Cannot Understand. So Confronted, The Candidate Must Either Bark With The Pack Or Be Lost... All The Odds Are On The Man Who Is, Intrinsically, The Most Devious And Mediocre.

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

Youth, Though It May Lack Knowledge, Is Certainly Not Devoid Of Intelligence; It Sees Through Shams With Sharp And Terrible Eyes.

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

Quotation Marks

As For Me, My Literary Theory, Like My Politics, Is Based Chiefly Upon One Main Idea, To Wit, The Idea Of Freedom. I Am, In Brief, A Libertarian Of The Most Extreme Variety, And Know Of No Human Right That Is One-tenth As Valuable As The Simple Right To Utter What Seems (at The Moment) To Be The Truth

Literary Theory

In Human History A Moral Victory Is Always A Disaster, For It Debauches And Degrades Both The Victor And The Vanquished.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Shave A Gorilla And It Would Be Almost Impossible, At Twenty Paces, To Distinguish Him From A Heavyweight Champion Of The World. Skin A Chimpanzee, And It Would Take An Autopsy To Prove He Was Not A Theologian.

The Storm Center Of Lawlessness In Every American State Is The State Capitol. It Is There That The Worst Crimes Are Committed; It Is There That Lawbreaking Attains To The Estate And Dignity Of A Learned Profession; It Is There That Contempt For The Laws Is Engendered, Fostered, And Spread Broadcast.

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

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

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.

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

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

The New Deal Began, Like The Salvation Army, By Promising To Save Humanity. It Ended, Again Like The Salvation Army, By Running Flop-houses And Disturbing The Peace.

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

The Central Difficulty Lies In The Fact That All Of The Sciences Have Made Such Great Progress During The Last Century That They Have Got Quite Beyond The Reach Of Man

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

The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal. Some Of Their Most Esteemed Inventions Have No Other Apparent Purpose - For Example, The Dinner Party Of More Than Two, The Epic Poem, And The Science Of Metaphysics.

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.

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.

Never Underestimate The Booberie Of The Booboisie.

Never Underestimate

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 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.

The First Rotarian Was The First Man To Call John The Baptist Jack.

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

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

After All, All He Did Was String Together A Lot Of Old, Well-known Quotations.

It Is The Mission Of The Pedagogue, Not To Make His Pupils Think, But To Make Them Think Right, And The More Nearly His Own Mind Pulsates With The Great Ebbs And Flows Of Popular Delusion And Emotion, The More Admirably He Performs His Function. He May Be An Ass, But That Is Surely No Demerit In A Man Paid To Make Asses Of His Customers.

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.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

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

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.

The Ideal Way To Get Rid Of Any Infectious Disease Would Be To Shoot Instantly Every Person Who Comes Down With It.

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.

Progress: The Process Whereby The Human Race Has Got Rid Of Whiskers, The Vermiform Appendix And God.

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.

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.

The Worshiper Is The Father Of The Gods.

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

The Taboos That I Have Mentioned Are Extraordinarily Harsh And Numerous. They Stand Around Nearly Every Subject That Is Genuinely Important To Man: They Hedge In Free Opinion And Experimentation On All Sides. Consider, For Example, The Matter Of Religion. It Is Debated Freely And Furiously In Almost Every Country In The World Save The United States, But Here The Critic Is Silenced. The Result Is That All Religions Are Equally Safeguarded Against Criticism, And That All Of Them Lose Vitality. We Protect The Status Quo, And So Make Steady War Upon Revision And Improvement.

The So-called Religious Organizations Which Now Lead The War Against The Teaching Of Evolution Are Nothing More, At Bottom, Than Conspiracies Of The Inferior Man Against His Betters.

The Art Of Writing, Like The Art Of Love, Runs All The Way From A Kind Of Routine Hard To Distinguish From Piling Bricks To A Kind Of Frenzy Closely Related To Delirium Tremens.

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.

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

The Intelligent, Like The Unintelligent, Are Responsive To Propaganda.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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.

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

Religion, After All, Is Nothing But An Hypothesis Framed To Account For What Is Evidentially Unaccounted For.

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.

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

Morality Is The Theory That Every Human Act Must Be Either Right Or Wrong, And That 99 % Of Them Are Wrong.

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.

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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

No Man Could Bring Himself To Reveal His True Character, And, Above All, His True Limitations As A Citizen And A Christian, His True Meannesses, His True Imbecilities, To His Friends, Or Even To His Wife. Honest Autobiography Is Therefore A Contradiction In Terms: The Moment A Man Considers Himself, Even In Petto, He Tries To Gild And Fresco Himself. Thus A Man's Wife, However Realistic Her View Of Him, Always Flatters Him In The End, For The Worst She Sees In Him Is Appreciably Better, By The Time She Sees It, Than What Is Actually There.

The Most Satisfying And Ecstatic Faith Is Almost Purely Agnostic. It Trusts Absolutely Without Professing To Know At All.

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.

A Cynic Is A Man Who, When He Smells Flowers, Looks Around For A Coffin.

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.

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.

I Confess I Enjoy Democracy Immensely. It Is Incomparably Idiotic, And Hence Incomparably Amusing.

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 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.

There Comes A Time In Every Man's Life When He's Consumed By The Desire To Spit On His Palms, Hoist The Black Flag And Start Cutting Throats.

The Truth Is . . . That The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Ever Ordinarily Respectable. No Virtuous Man - That Is, Virtuous In The Ymca Sense - Has Ever Painted A Picture Worth Looking At, Or Written A Symphony Worth Hearing, Or A Book Worth Reading, And It Is Highly Improbable That The Thing Has Ever Been Done By A Virtuous Woman.

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.

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.

[a Formula For Answering Controversial Letters -- Without Even Reading The Letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You May Be Right.

The Extortions And Oppressions Of Government Will Go On So Long As Such Bare Fraudulence Deceives And Disarms The Victims; So Long As They Are Ready To Swallow The Immemorial Official Theory That Protesting Against The Stealings Of The Archbishop's Secretary's Nephew's Mistress' Illegitimate Son Is A Sin Against The Holy Ghost.

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.

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

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

Mutual Interest

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.

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.

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

I Know Some Who Are Constantly Drunk On Books As Other Men Are Drunk On Whiskey.

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

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 Only Really Respectable Protestants Are The Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, They Are Also Palpable Idiots.

A Man Is Called A Good Fellow For Doing Things Which, If Done By A Woman, Would Land Her In A Lunatic Asylum.

Every Lynching Deprives Its Victim Of His Life Without Due Process Of Law, And Denies Him An Equal Protection Of The Law. The States Are Charged With Punishing All Such Invasions As The Common Rights Of The Citizens, But Some Of Them Have Failed In Their Effort To Do So, And Others Have Not Honestly Tried. Meanwhile, Lynchings Continue, And Though They Do Not Increase In Number, They Show Some Tendency To Increase In Savagery.

Nature Abhors A Moron.

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.

It Is Now Quite Lawful For A Catholic Woman To Avoid Pregnancy By A Resort To Mathematics, Though She Is Still Forbidden To Resort To Physics Or Chemistry.

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

The Only Good Bureaucrat Is One With A Pistol At His Head. Put It In His Hand And It's Good-bye To The Bill Of Rights.

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

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

To The Extent That I Am Genuinely Educated, I Am Suspicious Of All The Things That The Average Citizen Believes And The Average Pedagogue Teaches.

The Time Must Come Inevitably When Mankind Shall Surmount The Imbecility Of Religion, As It Has Surmounted The Imbecility Of Religion's Ally, Magic. It Is Impossible To Imagine This World Being Really Civilized So Long As So Much Nonsense Survives. In Even Its Highest Forms Religion Embraces Concepts That Run Counter To All Common Sense. It Can Be Defended Only By Making Assumptions And Adopting Rules Of Logic That Are Never Heard Of In Any Other Field Of Human Thinking.

Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.

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

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

The 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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Notion That Anything Is Gained By Fixing A Language In A Groove Is Cherished Only By Pedants.

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

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.

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

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.

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

The Value The World Sets Upon Motives Is Often Grossly Unjust And Inaccurate.

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.

I Hate All Sports As Rabidly As A Person Who Likes Sports Hates Common Sense.

The Argument That Capital Punishment Degrades The State Is Moonshine, For If That Were True Then It Would Degrade The State To Send Men To War... The State, In Truth, Is Degraded In Its Very Nature: A Few Butcheries Cannot Do It Any Further Damage.

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

The Only Time You Have A Free Press Is When You Own One.

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.

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

He Who Eats Alone Chokes Alone.

Philosophy First Constructs A Scheme Of Happiness And Then Tries To Fit The World To It.

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

The Difference Between A Moral Man And A Man Of Honor Is That The Latter Regrets A Discreditable Act, Even When It Has Worked And He Has Not Been Caught.

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.

God Is A Republican, And Santa Claus Is A Democrat.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

All The Charming And Beautiful Things, From The Song Of Songs, To Bouillabaisse, And From The Nine Beethoven Symphonies To The Martini Cocktail, Have Been Given To Humanity By Men Who, When The Hour Came, Turned From Tap Water To Something With Color In It, And More In It Than Mere Oxygen And Hydrogen.

It Is The Invariable Habit Of Bureaucracies, At All Times And Everywhere, To Assume...that Every Citizen Is A Criminal. Their One Apparent Purpose, Pursued With A Relentless And Furious Diligence, Is To Convert The Assumption Into A Fact. They Hunt Endlessly For Proofs, And, When Proofs Are Lacking, For Mere Suspicions. The Moment They Become Aware Of A Definite Citizen, John Doe, Seeking What Is His Right Under The Law, They Begin Searching Feverishly For An Excuse For Withholding It From Him.

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.

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.

Socialist: A Man Suffering From An Overwhelming Conviction To Believe What Is Not True.

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

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.

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

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

Without A Doubt There Are Women Who Would Vote Intelligently. There Are Also Men Who Knit Socks Beautifully.

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.

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.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

The Editors Are Committed To Nothing Save This: To Keep Common Sense As Fast As They Can, To Belabor Sham As Agreeably As Possible, To Give Civilized Entertainment.

I Know Of No Human Being Who Has A Better Time Than An Eager And Energetic Young Reporter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Haste Is Of The Devil. Slowness Is Of God.

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

To Be In Love Is Merely To Be In A State Of Perceptual Anesthesia - To Mistake An Ordinary Young Woman For A Goddess.

A Sunday School Is A Prison In Which Children Do Penance For The Evil Conscience Of Their Parents.

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.

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

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

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

Democracy Is Grounded Upon So Childish A Complex Of Fallacies That They Must Be Protected By A Rigid System Of Taboos, Else Even Halfwits Would Argue It To Pieces. Its First Concern Must Be To Penalize The Free Play Of Ideas.

It Is Difficult To Believe That Even Idiots Ever Succumbed To Such Transparent Contradictions, To Such Gaudy Processions Of Mere Counter-words, To So Vast And Obvious A Nonsensicalitysentence After Sentence That Has No Apparent Meaning At All--stuff Quite As Bad As The Worst Bosh Of Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Government Is Actually The Worst Failure Of Civilized Man. There Has Never Been A Really Good One, And Even Those That Are Most Tolerable Are Arbitrary, Cruel, Grasping And Unintelligent.

An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

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 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.

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

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.

The Other Day A Dog Peed On Me. A Bad Sign.

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

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.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

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

It Is More Blessed To Give Than Receive; For Example, Wedding Presents.

The Truth Is That Christian Theology, Like Every Other Theology, Is Not Only Opposed To The Scientific Spirit; It Is Also Opposed To All Other Attempts At Rational Thinking.

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

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

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

Suppose Two-thirds Of The Members Of The National House Of Representatives Were Dumped Into The Washington Garbage Incinerator Tomorrow, What Would We Lose To Offset Our Gain Of Their Salaries And The Salaries Of Their Parasites?

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

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

Democracies Have

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.

Trending Author

Marian Anderson

Category