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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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No Man Could Bring

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

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

Firmness In Decision Is Often Merely A Form Of Stupidity. It Indicates An Inability To Think The Same Thing Out Twice.

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

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

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.

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.

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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

A Church Is A Place In Which Gentlemen Who Have Never Been To Heaven Brag About It To Persons Who Will Never Get There.

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.

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

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

[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.

Perhaps The Most Revolting Character That The United States Ever Produced Was The Christian Businessman.

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.

By Profession A Biologist, [thomas Henry Huxley] Covered In Fact The Whole Field Of The Exact Sciences, And Then Bulged Through Its Four Fences. Absolutely Nothing Was Uninteresting To Him. His Curiosity Ranged From Music To Theology And From Philosophy To History. He Didn't Simply Know Something About Everything; He Knew A Great Deal About Everything.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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

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

As Long As The Southern Colleges Have Revivals On Their Campuses And Students Get Converted To Methodism And Join The Ymca And Are Accepted As Gentlemen, It Will Be Impossible To Think Of The South As Civilized...the Educated Folk Of The Old South Took Theology Lightly, And Religion To Them Was Hardly More Than A Charming Ritual, Useful On Solemn Occassions.

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

Change Is Not Progress.

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

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

A Good Politician Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

Nature Abhors A Moron.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

He Sailed Through American History Like A Steel Ship Loaded With Monoliths Of Granite.

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

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

The Believing Mind Is Externally Impervious To Evidence. The Most That Can Be Accomplished With It Is To Induce It To Substitute One Delusion For Another. It Rejects All Overt Evidence As Wicked.

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

The Psychologists And The Metaphysicians Wrangle Endlessly Over The Nature Of The Thinking Process In Man, But No Matter How Violently They Differ Otherwise They All Agree That It Has Little To Do With Logic And Is Not Much Conditioned By Overt Facts.

The Motive Of Fear Is The Be-all And End-all Of Religion.

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

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

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 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 A Standard Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

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

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.

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

The Fact Is That The Average Man's Love Of Liberty Is Nine-tenths Imaginary, Exactly Like His Love Of Sense, Justice And Truth... Liberty Is Not A Thing For The Great Masses Of Men. It Is The Exclusive Possession Of A Small And Disreputable Minority, Like Knowledge, Courage And Honor. It Takes A Special Sort Of Man To Understand And Enjoy Liberty - And He Is Usually An Outlaw In Democratic Societies.

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

Is It Hot In The Rolling Mill? Are The Hours Long? Is $15 A Day Not Enough? Then Escape Is Easy. Simply Throw Up Your Job, Spit On Your Hands, And Write Another "rosenkavailer."

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

A Woman Wishes To Mother A Man Simply Because She Sees Into His Helplessness, His Need Of An Amiable Environment, His Touching Self-delusion.

The Idea That Leisure Is Of Value In Itself Is Only Conditionally True. The Average Man Simply Spends His Leisure As A Dog Spends It. His Recreations Are All Puerile, And The Time Supposed To Benefit Him Really Only Stupefies Him.

When Women Kiss It Always Reminds One Of Prize Fighters Shaking Hands.

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

It Is Hell, Of Course, That Makes Priests Powerful, Not Heaven, For After Thousands Of Years Of So-called Civilization Fear Remains The One Common Denominator Of Mankind

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.

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

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

The Effort To Reconcile Science And Religion Is Almost Always Made, Not By Theologians, But By Scientists Unable To Shake Off Altogether The Piety Absorbed With Their Mother's Milk.

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.

Balloonists Have An Unsurpassed View Of The Scenery, But There Is Always The Possibility That It May Collide With Them.

By What Route Do Otherwise Sane Men Come To Believe Such Palpable Nonsense? How Is It Possible For A Human Brain To Be Divided Into Two Insulated Halves, One Functioning Normally, Naturally And Even Brilliantly, And The Other Capable Only Of Such Ghastly Balderdash Which Issues From The Minds Of Baptist Evangelists?

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

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

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.

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

Voting Is Simply A Way Of Determining Which Side Is The Stronger Without Putting It To The Test Of Fighting.

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

It Doesn't Take A Majority To Make A Rebellion; It Takes Only A Few Determined Leaders And A Sound Cause.

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.

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.

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

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

There's No Underestimating The Intelligence Of The American Public.

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.

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.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

Human Life Is Basically A Comedy. Even Its Tragedies Often Seem Comic To The Spectator, And Not Infrequently They Actually Have Comic Touches To The Victim. Happiness Probably Consists Largely In The Capacity To Detect And Relish Them. A Man Who Can Laugh, If Only At Himself, Is Never Really Miserable.

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

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

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

Every Failure Teaches A Man Something, To Wit, That He Will Probably Fail Again.

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

The Way To Deal With Superstition Is Not To Be Polite To It, But To Tackle It With All Arms, And So Rout It, Cripple It, And Make It Forever Infamous And Ridiculous. Is It, Perchance, Cherished By Persons Who Should Know Better? Then Their Folly Should Be Brought Out Into The Light Of Day, And Exhibited There In All Its Hideousness Until They Flee From It, Hiding Their Heads In Shame.

The Intellectual Heritage Of The Race Belongs To The Minority.

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

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

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.

And What Is A Good Citizen? Simply One Who Never Says, Does Or Thinks Anything That Is Unusual. Schools Are Maintained In Order To Bring This Uniformity Up To The Highest Possible Point. A School Is A Hopper Into Which Children Are Heaved While They Are Still Young And Tender; Therein They Are Pressed Into Certain Standard Shapes And Covered From Head To Heels With Official Rubber-stamps.

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.

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

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 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 Instant I Reach Heaven, I'm Going To Speak To God Very Sharply.

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

The Book Of Genesis, A Farrago Of Nonsense So Wholly Absurd That Even Sunday-school Scholars Have To Be Threatened With Hell To Make Them Accept It.

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.

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.

...no Man Of Genuinely Superior Intelligence Has Ever Been An Actor. Even Supposing A Young Man Of Appreciable Mental Powers To Be Lured Upon The Stage, As Philosophers Are Occasionally Lured Into Bordellos, His Mind Would Be Inevitably And Almost Immediately Destroyed By The Gaudy Nonsense Issuing From His Mouth Every Night.

The Feelings That Beethoven Put Into His Music Were The Feelings Of A God. There Was Something Olympian In His Snarls And Rages, And There Was A Touch Of Hellfire In His Mirth.

The Essential Dilemma Of Education Is To Be Found In The Fact That The Sort Of Man (or Woman) Who Knows A Given Subject Sufficiently Well To Teach It Is Usually Unwilling To Do So.

The Believing Mind Reaches Its Perihelion In The So-called Liberals. They Believe In Each And Every Quack Who Sets Up His Booth Inthe Fairgrounds, Including The Communists. The Communists Have Some Talents Too, But They Always Fall Short Of Believing In The Liberals.

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

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

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

The University President Who Cashiered Every Professor Unwilling To Support Woodrow Wilson For The First Vacancy In The Trinity. . . .

The Only Way For A Reporter To Look At A Politician Is Down.

Economic Independence Is The Foundation Of The Only Sort Of Freedom Worth A Damn

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

Funny Inspirational

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.

The Main Thing That Every Political Campaign In The United States Demonstrates Is That The Politicians Of All Parties, Despite Their Superficial Enmities, Are Really Members Of One Great Brotherhood. Their Principal, And Indeed Their Sole, Object Is To Collar Public Office, With All The Privileges And Profits That Go Therewith. They Achieve This Collaring By Buying Votes With Other People's Money.

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

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.

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

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.

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

The Best Years Are The Forties; After Fifty A Man Begins To Deteriorate, But In The Forties He Is At The Maximum Of His Villainy.

Suicide Is A Belated Acquiescence In The Opinion Of One's Wife's Relatives.

The Physical Business Of Writing Is Unpleasant To Me, But The Psychic Satisfaction Of Discharging Bad Ideas In Worse English Makes Me Forget It.

Psychotherapy Is The Theory That The Patient Will Probably Get Well Anyhow And Is Certainly A Damn Fool.

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

Humanitarianism

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

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

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.

The Scent Of Frying Astronomers Long Ago Ceased To Ascend To Yahweh.

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

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

Any Defeat, However Trivial, May Be Fatal To A Savior Of The Plain People. They Never Admire A Messiah With A Bloody Nose.

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

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

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.

Every Complex Problem Has A Simple Solution That Doesn't Work.

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

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

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.

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

The Old Testament, As Everyone Who Has Looked Into It Is Aware, Drips With Blood; There Is, Indeed, No More Bloody Chronicle In All The Literature Of The World.

Jury - A Group Of 12 People, Who, Having Lied To The Judge About Their Health, Hearing, And Business Engagements, Have Failed To Fool Him.

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

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

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

Never Drink If You've Got Any Work To Do. Never.

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.

[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.

Religion Is Fundamentally Opposed To Everything I Hold In Veneration - Courage, Clear Thinking, Honesty, Fairness, And, Above All, Love Of The Truth.

The Public, With Its Mob Yearning To Be Instructed, Edified And Pulled By The Nose, Demands Certainties; It Must Be Told Definitely And A Bit Raucously That This Is True And That Is False. But There Are No Certainties.

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

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

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

Osteopath--one Who Argues That All Human Ills Are Caused By The Pressure Of Hard Bone Upon Soft Tissue. The Proof Of His Theory Isto Be Found In The Heads Of Those Who Believe It.

The Priest, Realistically Considered, Is The Most Immoral Of Men, For He Is Always Willing To Sacrifice Every Other Sort Of Good To The One Good Of His Arcanum - The Vague Body Of Mysteries That He Calls The Truth.

Sin Is A Dangerous Toy In The Hands Of The Virtuous. It Should Be Left To The Congenitally Sinful, Who Know When To Play With It And When To Let It Alone.

Writing Does For Me What Giving Milk Does For A Cow.

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.

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

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

If We Assume That Man Actually Does Resemble God, Then We Are Forced Into The Impossible Theory That God Is A Coward, An Idiot And A Bounder.

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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.

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.

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.

What Ass First Let Loose The Doctrine That The Suffrage Is A High Boon And Voting A Noble Privilege?

A Bad Man Is The Sort Who Weeps Every Time He Speaks Of A Good Woman.

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

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

Man Weeps To Think That He Will Die So Soon; Woman, That She Was Born So Long Ago.

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

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

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

Great Achievement

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.

You Can't Do Anything About The Length Of Your Life, But You Can Do Something About Its Width And Depth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Average Schoolmaster Is And Always Must Be Essentially An Ass, For How Can One Imagine An Intelligent Man Engaging In So Puerile An Avocation.

Creator: A Comedian Whose Audience Is Afraid To Laugh.

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

Women Have Simple Tastes. They Get Pleasure Out Of The Conversation Of Children In Arms And Men In Love.

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.

Looking For An Honest Politician Is Like Looking For An Ethical Burglar.

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.

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

There Is Only One Honest Impulse At The Bottom Of Puritanism, And That Is The Impulse To Punish The Man With A Superior Capacity For Happiness.

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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