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Man, Without A Saving Touch Of Woman In Him, Is Too Doltish, Too Naive And Romantic, Too Easily Deluded And Lulled To Sleep By His Imagination To Be Anything Above A Cavalryman, A Theologian Or A Corporation Director.

-H. L. Mencken

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Man, Without A Saving

H. L. Mencken

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Man, Without A Saving Touch Of Woman In Him, Is Too Doltish, Too Naive And Romantic, Too Easily Deluded And Lulled To Sleep By His Imagination To Be Anything Above A Cavalryman, A Theologian Or A Corporation Director.

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Evil Is That Which One Believes Of Others.

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.

The Doctrine That The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy Is Like Saying That The Cure Of Crime Is More Crime.

In The Long Run All Battles Are Lost, And So Are All Wars.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

There Are Men So Philosophical That They Can See Humor In Their Own Toothaches. But There Has Never Lived A Man So Philosophical That He Could See The Toothache In His Own Humor.

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.

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

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

There Has Been No Organized Effort To Keep Government Down Since Jefferson's Day. Ever Since Then The American People Have Been Bolstering Up Its Powers And Giving It More And More Jurisdiction Over Their Affairs. They Pay For That Folly In Increased Taxes And Diminished Liberties.

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

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.

The Average Man Never Really Thinks From End To End Of His Life. The Mental Activity Of Such People Is Only A Mouthing Of Cliches. What They Mistake For Thought Is Simply A Repetition Of What They Have Heard. My Guess Is That Well Over 80 Percent Of The Human Race Goes Through Life Without Having A Single Original Thought.

Justice Is What You Get When You Run Out Of Money.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Don't Tell Me What Delusion He Entertains Regarding God, Or What Mountebank He Follows In Politics, Or What He Springs From, Or What He Submits To From His Wife. Simply Tell Me How He Makes His Living. It Is The Safest And Surest Of All Known Tests. A Man Who Gets His Board And Lodging On This Ball In An Ignominious Way Is Inevitably An Ignominious Man.

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

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

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 Great Achievement Of Liberal Protestantism Was To Make God Boring.

Great Achievement

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man. One May Believe In An Idea Absolutely, But Not In A Man.

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.

For Every Problem, There Is A Solution That Is Simple, Neat, And Wrong.

Never Let Your Inferiors Do You A Favor - It Will Be Extremely Costly.

Skin Diseases Are Something Doctors Like, The Patient Neither Dies Nor Gets Well.

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

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

Life Without Sex Might Be Safer But It Would Be Unbearably Dull

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

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

Everyman Is Thoroughly Happy Twice In His Life, Just After He Has Met His First Love, And Just After He Has Left His Last One.

One Does Not Arise From Such A Book As Sister Carrie With A Smirk Of Satisfaction; One Leaves It Infinitely Touched.

It Reminds Me Of A String Of Wet Sponges; It Reminds Me Of Tattered Washing On The Line; It Reminds Me Of Stale Bean Soup, Of College Yells, Of Dogs Barking Idiotically Through Endless Nights. It Is So Bad That A Sort Of Grandeur Creeps Into It. It Drags Itself Up Out Of The Dark Abyss Of Pish And Crawls Insanely Up The Topmost Pinnacle Of Posh. It Is Rumble And Bumble. It Is Flap And Doodle. It Is Balder And Dash.

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

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

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

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.

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

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

Democracies Have

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

Others Opinions

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

[the] Erroneous Assumption Is To The Effect That The Aim Of Public Education Is To Fill The Young Of The Species With Knowledge And Awaken Their Intelligence, And So Make Them Fit To Discharge The Duties Of Citizenship In An Enlightened And Independent Manner. Nothing Could Be Further From The Truth. The Aim Of Public Education Is Not To Spread Enlightenment At All; It Is Simply To Reduce As Many Individuals As Possible To The Same Safe Level, To Breed And Train A Standardised Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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.

The Allurement That Women Hold Out To Men Is Precisely The Allurement That Cape Hatteras Holds Out To Sailors; They Are Enormously Dangerous And Hence Enormously Fascinating.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

To Be Happy One Must Be (a) Well Fed, Unhounded By Sordid Cares, At Ease In Zion, (b) Full Of A Comfortable Feeling Of Superiority To The Masses Of One's Fellow Men, And (c) Delicately And Unceasingly Amused According To One's Taste. It Is My Contention That, If This Definition Be Accepted, There Is No Country In The World Wherein A Man Constituted As I Am - A Man Of My Peculiar Weakness, Vanities, Appetites, And Aversions - Can Be So Happy As He Can Be In The United States.

To Every Complex Question There Is A Simple Answer And It Is Wrong.

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.

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.

Chopin--two Embalmers At Work Upon A Minor Poetthe Scent Of Tuberosesautumn Rain.

The Federal [bank Deposit] Insurance Scheme Has Worked Up To Now Simply And Solely Because There Have Been Very Few Bank Failures. The Next Time We Have A Pestilence Of Them It Will Come To Grief Quickly Enough, And If The Good Banks Escape Ruin With The Bad Ones It Will Be Only Because The Taxpayer Foots The Bill.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Trouble With Fighting For Human Freedom Is That One Spends Most Of One's Time Defending Scoundrels. For It Is Against Scoundrels That Oppressive Laws Are First Aimed, And Oppression Must Be Stopped At The Beginning If It Is To Be Stopped At All.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

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.

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

The Artist Is Not A Reporter, But A Great Teacher. It Is Not His Business To Depict The World As It Is, But As It Ought To Be.

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.

Truth Would Quickly Cease To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Once We Got As Used To It.

[t]here Is Only One Sound Argument For Democracy, And That Is The Argument That It Is A Crime For Any Man To Hold Himself Out As Better Than Other Men, And, Above All, A Most Heinous Offense For Him To Prove It.

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

It Is The Theory Of All Modern Civilized Governments That They Protect And Foster The Liberty Of The Citizen; It Is The Practice Of All Of Them To Limit Its Exercise, And Sometimes Very Narrowly.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

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

All Government, Of Course, Is Against Liberty.

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.

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.

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.

Man, Without A Saving Touch Of Woman In Him, Is Too Doltish, Too Naive And Romantic, Too Easily Deluded And Lulled To Sleep By His Imagination To Be Anything Above A Cavalryman, A Theologian Or A Corporation Director.

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

The 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.

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

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

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.

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

The Best Teacher Is Not The One Who Knows Most But The One Who Is Most Capable Of Reducing Knowledge To That Simple Compound Of The Obvious And Wonderful.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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 State Is Not Force Alone. It Depends Upon The Credulity Of Man Quite As Much As Upon His Docility. Its Aim Is Not Merely To Make Him Obey, But Also To Make Him Want To Obey.

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

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

Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want, And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.

Democracies Have

The Theatre, When All Is Said And Done, Is Not Life In Miniature, But Life Enormously Magnified, Life Hideously Exaggerated.

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.

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

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.

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.

Our Literature, Despite Several False Starts That Promised Much, Is Chiefly Remarkable, Now As Always, For Its Respectable Mediocrity.

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

If All The Lawyers Were Hanged Tomorrow, And Their Bones Were Sold To A Mah Jong Factory, We'd All Be Freer And Safer, And Our Taxes Would Be Reduced By Almost A Half.

The Learned Are Seldom Pretty Fellows, And In Many Cases Their Appearance Tends To Discourage A Love Of Study In The Young.

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

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

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

If The American People Really Tire Of Democracy And Want To Make A Trial Of Fascism, I Shall Be The Last Person To Object. But If That Is Their Mood, Then They Had Better Proceed Toward Their Aim By Changing The Constitution And Not By Forgetting It.

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

Man, At His Best, Remains A Sort Of One-lunged Animal, Never Completely Rounded And Perfect, As A Cockroach, Say, Is Perfect.

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.

In The United States...politics Is Purged Of All Menace, All Sinister Quality, All Genuine Significance, And Stuffed With Such Gorgeous Humors, Such Inordinate Farce That One Comes To The End Of A Campaign With One's Ribs Loose, And Ready For King Lear, Or A Hanging, Or A Course Of Medical Journals.

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.

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

Whenever A Reporter Is Assigned To Cover A Methodist Conference, He Comes Home An Atheist.

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.

Wealth - Any Income That Is At Least One Hundred Dollars More A Year Than The Income Of One's Wife's Sister's Husband.

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

This Combat Between Proletariat And Plutocracy Is, After All, Itself A Civil War. Two Inferiorities Struggle For The Privilege Of Polluting The World.

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.

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

There Are Two Kinds Of Europeans: The Smart Ones, And Those Who Stayed Behind.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Politics, Under A Democracy, Reduces Itself To A Mere Struggle For Office By Flatterers Of The Proletariat; Even When A Superior Man Prevails At That Disgusting Game He Must Prevail At The Cost Of His Self-respect. Not Many Superior Men Make The Attempt. The Average Great Captain Of The Rabble, When He Is Not Simply A Weeper Over Irremediable Wrongs, Is A Hypocrite So Far Gone That He Is Unconscious Of His Own Hypocrisy.. A Slimy Fellow, Offensive To The Nose.

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

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

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

It Is Almost As Safe To Assume That An Artist Of Any Dignity Is Against His Country, I.e., Against The Environment In Which God Hath Placed Him, As It Is To Assume That His Country Is Against The Artist.

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

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

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

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

Remorse - Regret That One Waited So Long To Do It.

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.

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

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 Americans Are The Illegitimate Children Of The English.

Illegitimate Child

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

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

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.

No Matter How Happily A Woman May Be Married, It Always Pleases Her To Discover That There Is A Nice Man Who Wishes That She Were Not.

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.

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

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.

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

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

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

Original Thought

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

Capitalism Under Democracy Has A Further Advantage: Its Enemies, Even When It Is Attacked, Are Scattered And Weak, And It Is Usually Easily Able To Array One Half Of Them Against The Other Half, And Thus Dispose Of Both.

Democracies Have

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

One Of The Main Purposes Of Laws In A Democratic Society Is To Put Burdens Upon Intelligence And Reduce It To Impotence. Ostensibly, Their Aim Is To Penalize Anti-social Acts; Actually Their Aim Is To Penalize Heretical Opinions. At Least Ninety-five Americans Out Of Every 100 Believe That This Process Is Honest And Even Laudable; It Is Practically Impossible To Convince Them That There Is Anything Evil In It. In Other Words, They Cannot Grasp The Concept Of Liberty.

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

The Worst Government Is Often The Most Moral. One Composed Of Cynics Is Often Very Tolerant And Humane. But When Fanatics Are On Top There Is No Limit To Oppression.

The Common Argument That Crime Is Caused By Poverty Is A Kind Of Slander On The Poor.

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

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.

Life May Not Be Exactly Pleasant, But It Is At Least Not Dull. Heave Yourself Into Hell Today, And You May Miss, Tomorrow Or Next Day, Another Scopes Trial, Or Another War To End War, Or Perchance A Rich And Buxom Widow With All Her First Husband's Clothes. There Are Always More Hardings Hatching. I Advocate Hanging On As Long As Possible.

It Seems To Me That Society Usually Wins. There Are, To Be Sure, Free Spirits In The World, But Their Freedom, In The Last Analysis, Is Not Much Greater Than That Of A Canary In A Cage. They May Leap From Perch To Perch; They May Bathe And Guzzle At Their Will; They May Flap Their Wings And Sing. But They Are Still In The Cage, And Soon Or Late It Conquers Them.

One Is Conscious Of No Brave And Noble Earnestness In It, Of No Generalized Passion For Intellectual And Spiritual Adventure, Of No Organized Determination To Think Things Out. What Is There Is A Highly Self-conscious And Insipid Correctness, A Bloodless Respectability Submergence Of Matter In Manner--in Brief, What Is There Is The Feeble, Uninspiring Quality Of German Painting And English Music.

What Is The Function That A Clergyman Performs In The World? Answer: He Gets His Living By Assuring Idiots That He Can Save Them From An Imaginary Hell.

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.

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

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Conscience Is The Accumulated Sediment Of Ancestral Faint- Heartedness

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality. It Is Impossible To Find A Hygienist Who Does Not Debase His Theory Of The Healthful With A Theory Of The Virtuous. ... The Aim Of Medicine Is Surely Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices.

The Average Woman Must Inevitably View Her Actual Husband With A Certain Disdain; He Is Anything But Her Ideal. In Consequence, She Cannot Help Feeling That Her Children Are Cruelly Handicapped By The Fact That He Is Their Father.

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

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

A Great Nation Is Any Mob Of People Which Produces At Least One Honest Man A Century.

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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.

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

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.

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