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

-H. L. Mencken

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Of All The Human

H. L. Mencken

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

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University Professors

More From H. L. Mencken

No One In This World, So Far As I Know - And I Have Searched The Records For Years, And Employed Agents To Help Me - Has Ever Lost Money By Underestimating The Intelligence Of The Great Masses Of The Plain People.

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

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.

Adultery Is The Application Of Democracy To Love.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

School Days, I Believe, Are The Unhappiest In The Whole Span Of Human Existence.

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

All That The Y.m.c.a.'s Horse And Rings Really Accomplished Was To Fill Me With An Ineradicable Distaste, Not Only For Christian Endeavor In All Its Forms, But Also For Every Variety Of Calisthenics, So That I Still Begrudge The Trifling Exertion Needed To Climb In And Out Of A Bathtub, And Hate All Sports As Rabidly As A Person Who Likes Sports Hates Common Sense. If I Had My Way No Man Guilty Of Golf Would Be Eligible To Any Office Of Trust Or Profit Under The United States, And All Female Athletes Would Be Shipped To The White-slave Corrals Of The Argentine.

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.

All I Ask Is Equal Freedom. When It Is Denied, As It Always Is, I Take It Anyhow.

The Curse Of Man, And The Cause Of Nearly All His Woe, Is His Stupendous Capacity For Believing The Incredible.

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

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.

What Is Too Often Forgotten Is That Nature Obviously Intends The Botched To Die, And That Every Interference With That Benign Process Is Full Of Dangers.

Metaphysics Is Almost Always An Attempt To Prove The Incredible By An Appeal To The Unintelligible.

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.

How To Drink Like A Gentleman: The Things To Do And The Things Not To, As Learned In 30 Years' Extensive Research.

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

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.

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

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

[c]lass Consciousness Is Not One Of Our National Diseases; We Suffer, Indeed, From Its Opposite-the Delusion That Class Barriers Are Not Real. That Delusion Reveals Itself In Many Forms, Some Of Them As Beautiful As A Glass Eye. One Is The Liberal Doctrine That A Prairie Demagogue Promoted To The United States Senate Will Instantly Show All The Sagacity Of A Metternich ... Another Is The Doctrine That A Moronrun Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Cease Thereby To Be A Moron.

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

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

Democracy Is Only A Dream: It Should Be Put In The Same Category As Arcadia, Santa Claus, And Heaven.

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

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

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

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

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Love Begins Like A Triolet And Ends Like A College Yell.

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

A Fool Who, After Plain Warning, Persists In Dosing Himself With Dangerous Drugs Should Be Free To Do So, For His Death Is A Benefit To The Race In General.

It Is Surely No Mere Coincidence That The Land Of The Emancipated And Enthroned Woman Is Also The Land Of Canned Soup, Of Canned Pork And Beans, Of Whole Meals In Cans, And Of Everything Else Ready Made.

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.

I Believe That It Should Be Perfectly Lawful To Print Even Things That Outrage The Pruderies And Prejudices Of The General, So Long As Any Honest Minority, However Small, Wants To Read Them. The Remedy Of The Majority Is Not Prohibition, But Avoidance.

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

The Seasick Passenger On An Ocean Liner Detests The Good Sailor Who Stalks Past Him 265 Times A Day Grandly Smoking A Large, Greasy Cigar. In Precisely The Same Way The Democrat Hates The Man Who Is Having A Better Time In The World. This Is The Origin Of Democracy. It Is Also The Origin Of Puritanism.

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

Humanitarianism

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 State Doesn't Just Want You To Obey, It Wants To Make You Want To Obey.

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.

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

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.

The Truth, Indeed, Is Something That Mankind, For Some Mysterious Reason, Instinctively Dislikes. Every Man Who Tries To Tell It Is Unpopular, And Even When, By The Sheer Strength Of His Case, He Prevails, He Is Put Down As A Scoundrel.

Women Always Excel Men In That Sort Of Wisdom Which Comes From Experience. To Be A Woman Is In Itself A Terrible Experience.

The World Always Makes The Assumption That The Exposure Of An Error Is Identical With The Discovery Of Truth - That Error And Truth Are Simply Opposite. They Are Nothing Of The Sort. What The World Turns To, When It Has Been Cured Of One Error, Is Usually Simply Another Error, And Maybe One Worse Than The First One.

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

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 Notion That A Radical Is One Who Hates His Country Is Naïve And Usually Idiotic. He Is, More Likely, One Who Likes His Country More Than The Rest Of Us, And Is Thus More Disturbed Than The Rest Of Us When He Sees It Debauched. He Is Not A Bad Citizen Turning To Crime; He Is A Good Citizen Driven To Despair.

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

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

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

It Is The Fundamental Theory Of All The More Recent American Law...that The Average Citizen Is Half-witted, And Hence Not To Be Trusted To Either His Own Devices Or His Own Thoughts.

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

All The Great Enterprises Of The World Are Run By A Few Smart Men: Their Aides And Associates Run Down By Rapid Stages To The Level Of Sheer Morons. Everyone Knows That This Is True Of Government, But We Often Forget That It Is Equally True Of Private Undertakings. In The Average Great Bank, Or Railroad, Or Other Corporation The Burden Of Management Lies Upon A Small Group. The Rest Are Ciphers.

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.

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

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

Religion Is "so Absurd That It Comes Close To Imbecility."

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

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

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

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.

All Men Are Frauds. The Only Difference Between Them Is That Some Admit It. I Myself Deny It.

It Takes No More Actual Sagacity To Carry On The Everyday Hawking And Haggling Of The World, Or To Ladle Out Its Normal Doses Of Bad Medicine And Worse Law, Than It Takes To Operate A Taxicab Or Fry A Pan Of Fish.

We Have Had More Brilliant Presidents Than Cleveland, And One Or Two Who Were Considerably More Profound, But We Have Never Had One, At Least Since Washington, Whose Fundamental Character Was Solider And More Admirable.

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

To Sum Up: 1. The Cosmos Is A Gigantic Fly-wheel Making 10,000 Revolutions A Minute. 2. Man Is A Sick Fly Taking A Dizzy Ride On It. 3. Religion Is The Theory That The Wheel Was Designed And Set Spinning To Give Him The Ride.

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.

A Free Citizen In A Free State, It Seems To Me, Has An Inalienable Right To Play With Whomsoever He Will, So Long As He Does Not Disturb The General Peace. If Any Other Citizen, Offended By The Spectacle, Makes A Pother, Then That Other Citizen, And Not The Man Exercising His Inalienable Right, Should Be Put Down By The Police.

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

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.

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

Original Thought

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.

Why Do Men Delight In Work? Fundamentally, I Suppose, Because There Is A Sense Of Relief And Pleasure In Getting Something Done - A Kind Of Satisfaction Not Unlike That Which A Hen Enjoys On Laying An Egg.

No One Ever Heard Of The Truth Being Enforced By Law. When The Secular Is Called In To Sustain An Idea, Whether New Or Old, It Is Always A Bad Idea, And Not Infrequently It Is Downright Idiotic.

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

University Professors

The Effect Of Every Sort Of New Deal Is To Increase And Prosper The Criminal Class. It Teaches Precisely What All Professional Criminals Believe, To Wit, That, It Is Neither Virtuous Nor Necessary To Suffer And To Do Without.

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

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

The Theory Seems To Be That As Long As A Man Is A Failure He Is One Of God's Children, But That As Soon As He Succeeds He Is Taken Over By The Devil.

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 Fundamental Trouble With Marriage Is That It Shakes A Man's Confidence In Himself, And So Greatly Diminishes His General Competence And Effectiveness. His Habit Of Mind Becomes That Of A Commander Who Has Lost A Decisive And Calamitous Battle. He Quite Trusts Himself Thereafter.

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

Journalism Is To Politician As Dog Is To Lamp-post.

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

A Nun, At Best, Is Only Half A Woman, Just As A Priest Is Only Half A Man.

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

Whatever The Label On The Parties, Or The War Cries Issuing From The Demagogues Who Lead Them, The Practical Choice Is Between The Plutocracy On The One Side And A Rabble Of Preposterous Impossibilists On The Other.

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

I Am Never Much Interested In The Effects Of What I Write....i Seldom Read With Any Attention The Reviews Of My...books. Two Times Out Of Three I Know Something About The Reviewer, And In Very Few Cases Have I Any Respect For His Judgments. Thus His Praise, If He Praises Me, Leaves Me Unmoved. I Can't Recall Any Review That Has Even Influenced Me In The Slightest. I Live In Sort Of A Vacuum, And I Suspect That Most Other Writers Do, Too. It Is Hard To Imagine One Of The Great Ones Paying Any Serious Attention To Contemporary Opinion.

It Takes A Long While For A Naturally Trustful Person To Reconcile Himself To The Idea That After All God Will Not Help Him

Long Distance Relationship

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.

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

Civilization, In Fact, Grows More Maudlin And Hysterical; Especially Under Democracy It Tends To Degenerate Into A Mere Combat Of Crazes; The Whole Aim Of Practical Politics Is To Keep The Populace Alarmed (and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety) By An Endless Series Of Hobgoblins, Most Of Them Imaginary. Wars Are No Longer Waged By The Will Of Superior Men, Capable Of Judging Dispassionately And Intelligently The Causes Behind Them And The Effects Flowing Out Of Them. The Are Now Begun By First Throwing A Mob Into A Panic; They Are Ended Only When It Has Spent Its Ferine Fury.

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

I Go On Working For The Same Reason That A Hen Goes On Laying Eggs.

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.

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.

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

It Is Hard To Believe That A Man Is Telling The Truth When You Know That You Would Lie If You Were In His Place.

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

I'm Ombibulous. I Drink Every Known Alcoholic Drink And Enjoy Them All.

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.

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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

Democracy Turns Upon And Devours Itself. Universal Suffrage, In Theory The Palladium Of Our Liberties, Becomes The Assurance Of Our Slavery. And That Slavery Will Grow More And More Abject And Ignoble As The Differential Birth Rate, The Deliberate Encouragement Of Mendicancy And The Failure Of Popular Education Produce A Larger And Larger Mass Of Prehensile Half-wits, And So Make The Demagogues More And More Secure.

The Prophesying Business Is Like Writing Fugues; It Is Fatal To Every One Save The Man Of Absolute Genius.

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

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

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.

I Believe That Any Man Who Takes The Liberty Of Another Into His Keeping Is Bound To Become A Tyrant, And That Any Man Who Yields Up His Liberty, In However Slight The Measure, Is Bound To Become A Slave.

Such Is The Art Of Writing As Dreiser Understands It And Practices It--an Endless Piling Up Of Minutiae, An Almost Ferocious Tracking Down Of Ions, Electrons And Molecules, An Unshakable Determination To Tell It All. One Is Amazed By The Mole-like Diligence Of The Man, And No Less By His Exasperating Disregard For The Ease Of His Readers.

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

The Great Difficulty About Keeping The Ten Commandments Is That No Man Can Keep Them And Be A Gentleman.

Not By Accident, You May Be Sure, Do The Christian Scriptures Make The Father Of Knowledge A Serpent - Slimy, Sneaking And Abominable.

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 ... The Superior Man Can Be Sure Of Freedom Only If It Is Given To All Men.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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

Five Years Of Prohibition Have Had, At Least, This One Benign Effect: They Have Completely Disposed Of All The Favorite Arguments Of The Prohibitionists. None Of The Great Boons And Usufructs That Were To Follow The Passage Of The Eighteenth Amendment Has Come To Pass. There Is Not Less Drunkenness In The Republic, But More. There Is Not Less Crime, But More. There Is Not Less Insanity, But More. The Cost Of Government Is Not Smaller, But Vastly Greater. Respect For Law Has Not Increased, But Diminished.

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

Women Have A Hard Time Of It In This World. They Are Oppressed By Man-made Laws, Man-made Social Customs, Masculine Egoism, The Delusion Of Masculine Superiority. Their One Comfort Is The Assurance That, Even Though It May Be Impossible To Prevail Against Man, It Is Always Possible To Enslave And Torture A Man.

Of All Forms Of Visible Otherworldliness, It Seems To Me, The Gothic Is At Once The Most Logical And The Most Beautiful. It Reaches Up Magnificently-and A Good Half Of It Is Palpably Useless.

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

The 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 Pedant And The Priest Have Always Been The Most Expert Of Logicians - And The Most Diligent Disseminators Of Nonsense And Worse.

Let No One Mistake It For Comedy, Farcical Though It May Be In All Its Details. It Serves Notice On The Country That Neanderthal Man Is Organizing In These Forlorn Backwaters Of The Land, Led By A Fanatic, Rid Of Sense And Devoid Of Conscience.

Each Party Steals So Many Articles Of Faith From The Other, And The Candidates Spend So Much Time Making Each Other's Speeches, That By The Time Election Day Is Past There Is Nothing Much To Do Save Turn The Sitting Rascals Out And Let A New Gang In.

There Is Something Even More Valuable To Civilization Than Wisdom, And That Is Character.

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.

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality.

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.

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

Who Ever Heard, Indeed, Of An Autobiography That Was Not (interesting)? I Can Recall None In All The Literature Of The World

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

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

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.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

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

For It Is Mutual Trust, Even More Than Mutual Interest That Holds Human Associations Together. Our Friends Seldom Profit Us But They Make Us Feel Safe. Marriage Is A Scheme To Accomplish Exactly That Same End.

Mutual Interest

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.

No One In This World, So Far As I Know--and I Have Searched The Records For Years, And Employed Agents To Help Me--has Ever Lost Money By Underestimating The Intelligence Of The Great Masses Of The Plain People. Nor Has Any One Ever Lost Public Office Thereby. The Mistake That Is Made Always Runs The Other Way. Because The Plain People Are Able To Speak And Understand, And Even, In Many Cases, To Read And Write, It Is Assumed That They Have Ideas In Their Heads, And An Appetite For More. This Assumption Is Folly. They Dislike Ideas, For Ideas Make Them Uncomfortable.

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

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

[government] Is Apprehended, Not As A Committee Of Citizens Chosen To Carry On The Communal Business Of The Whole Population, But As A Separate And Autonomous Corporation, Mainly Devoted To Exploiting The Population For The Benefit Of Its Own Members.

What The Meaning Of Human Life May Be I Don't Know: I Incline To Suspect That It Has None.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

Haste Is Of The Devil. Slowness Is Of God.

Anyhow, The Hole In The Donut Is At Least Digestible.

No Matter How Long He Lives, No Man Ever Becomes As Wise As The Average Woman Of Forty-eight.

Man Is The Yokel Par Excellence, The Booby Unmatchable, The King Dupe Of The Cosmos. He Is Chronically And Unescapably Deceived, Not Only By The Other Animals And By The Delusive Face Of Nature Herself--by His Incomparable Talent For Searching Out And Embracing What Is False, And For Overlooking And Denying What Is True.

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.

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

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

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

Correct Spelling, Indeed, Is One Of The Arts That Are Far More Esteemed By Schoolma’ams Than By Practical Men, Neck-deep In The Heat And Agony Of The World.

It Is My Conviction That No Normal Man Ever Fell In Love, Within The Ordinary Meaning Of The Term, After The Age Of Thirty.

At A Time When The Respectable Bourgeois Youngsters Of My Generation Were College Freshmen, Oppressed By Simian Sophomores And Affronted With Balderdash Daily And Hourly By Chalky Pedagogues, I Was At Large In A Wicked Seaport Of Half A Million People, With A Front Seat At Every Public Show, As Free Of The Night As Of Day, And Getting Earfuls Of Instruction In A Hundred Giddy Arcana, None Of Them Taught In Schools.... [but] If I Neglected The Humanities, I Was Meanwhile Laying In All The Worldly Wisdom Of A Police Lieutenant, A Bartender, A Shyster Lawyer, Or A Midwife.

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

The Verdict Of A Jury Is The A Priori Opinion Of That Juror Who Smokes The Worst Cigars.

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.

Some Immemorial Imbecilities Have Been Added Deliberately, On The Ground That It Is Just As Interesting To Note How Foolish Men Have Been As To Note How Wise They Have Been.

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

I Know A Good Many Men Of Great Learning-that Is, Men Born With An Extraordinary Eagerness And Capacity To Acquire Knowledge. One And All, They Tell Me That They Can't Recall Learning Anything Of Any Value In School. All That Schoolmasters Managed To Accomplish With Them Was To Test And Determine The Amount Of Knowledge That They Had Already Acquired Independently-and Not Infrequently The Determination Was Made Clumsily And Inaccurately.

This Passion, So Unordered And Yet So Potent, Explains The Capacity For Teaching That One Frequently Observes In Scientific Men Of High Attainments In Their Specialties-for Example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted And Osler-men Who Knew Nothing Whatever About The So-called Science Of Pedagogy, And Would Have Derided Its Alleged Principles If They Had Heard Them Stated.

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.

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

One Of The Most Mawkish Of Human Delusions Is The Notion That Friendship Should Be Eternal, Or, At All Events, Life-long, And That Any Act Which Puts A Term To It Is Somehow Discreditable.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Thing Constantly Overlooked By Those Hopefuls Who Talk About Abolishing War Is That It Is By No Means An Evidence Of Decay But Rather A Proof Of Health And Vigor.

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

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