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

-H. L. Mencken

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People Do Not Expect

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Those Tragic Comedians, The Chamber Of Commerce Red Hunters, The Women's Christian Temperance Union Smellers, The Censors Of Books, The Klan Regulators, The Methodist Prowlers, The Baptist Guardians Of Sacred Vessels-we Have The National Mentality Of A Police Lieutenant.

...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.

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

Thanksgiving Day

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

The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

I Have Little Belief In Human Progress. The Human Race Is Incurably Idiotic. It Will Never Be Happy.

It Is The Classic Fallacy Of Our Time That A Moron Run Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Thereby Cease To Be A Moron.

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

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.

Good Government Is That Which Delivers The Citizen From Being Done Out Of His Life And Property Too Arbitrarily And Violently-one That Relieves Him Sufficiently From The Barbaric Business Of Guarding Them To Enable Him To Engage In Gentler, More Dignified, And More Agreeable Undertakings.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

For It Is An Absurdity To Call A Country Civilized In Which A Decent And Industrious Man, Laboriously Mastering A Trade Which Is Valuble And Necessary To The Common Weal, Has No Assurance That It Will Sustain Him While He Stands Ready To Practice It, Or Keep Him Out Of The Poorhouse When Illness Or Age Makes Him Idle.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Great Literature Is Thus Chiefly The Product Of Doubting And Inquiring Minds In Revolt Against The Immovable Certainties Of The Nation.

Whenever I Write Anything That Sets Up Controversy Its Meaning Is Distorted Almost Instantly. Even The Editorial Writers Of Newspapers Seem To Be Unable To Understand The Plainest Sentence.

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

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

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

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

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 Ails The Truth Is That It Is Mainly Uncomfortable, And Often Dull. The Human Mind Seeks Something More Amusing, And More Caressing.

It Is The Dull Man Who Is Always Sure, And The Sure Man Who Is Always Dull.

The Common Notion That Free Speech Prevails In The United States Always Makes Me Laugh.

Nine Times Out Of Ten, In The Arts As In Life, There Is Actually No Truth To Be Discovered; There Is Only Error To Be Exposed.

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

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

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

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.

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, In That All Government Must Necessarily Make War On Liberty, And That The Democratic Government Is At Least As Bad As Any Of The Other Forms.

Great Artists Are Modest Almost As Seldom As They Are Faithful To Their Wives.

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

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

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.

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

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.

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

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

The Acting That One Sees Upon The Stage Does Not Show How Human Beings Comport Themselves In Crises, But How Actors Think They Ought To. It Is Thus, Like Poetry And Religion, A Device For Gladdening The Heart With What Is Palpably Not True.

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.

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

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.

The Lunatic Fringe Wags The Underdog.

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.

Clergyman: A Ticket Speculator Outside The Gates Of Heaven.

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

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.

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

It Is Common To Assume That Human Progress Affects Everyone - That Even The Dullest Man, In These Bright Days, Knows More Than Any Man Of, Say, The Eighteenth Century, And Is Far More Civilized. This Assumption Is Quite Erroneous. . . . The Great Masses Of Men, Even In This Inspired Republic, Are Precisely Where The Mob Was At The Dawn Of History. They Are Ignorant, They Are Dishonest, They Are Cowardly, They Are Ignoble. They Know Little If Anything That Is Worth Knowing, And There Is Not The Slightest Sign Of A Natural Desire Among Them To Increase Their Knowledge.

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

I Am A Strict Monogamist: It Is Twenty Years Since I Last Went To Bed With Two Women At Once, And Then I Was In My Cups And Not Myself.

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

The Best Teacher Of Children, In Brief, Is One Who Is Essentially Childlike.

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 Double Standard Of Morality Will Survive In This World So Long As The Woman Whose Husband Has Been Lured Away Is Favoured With The Sympathetic Tears Of Other Women, And A Man Whose Wife Has Made Off Is Laughed At By Other Men.

War Will Never Cease Until Babies Begin To Come Into The World With Larger Cerebrums And Smaller Adrenal Glands.

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

Richard Strauss--old Home Week In Gomorrah

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

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.

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

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

The Chief Difference Between Free Capitalism And State Socialism Seems To Be This: That Under The Former A Man Pursues His Own Advantage Openly, Frankly And Honestly, Whereas Under The Latter He Does So Hypocritically And Under False Pretenses.

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

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.

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

Nothing Is So Abject And Pathetic As A Politician Who Has Lost His Job, Save Only A Retired Stud-horse.

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.

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.

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

Friendship Is A Common Belief In The Same Fallacies, Mountebanks And Hobgoblins.

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

Evangelical Christianity, As Everyone Knows, Is Founded Upon Hate, As The Christianity Of Christ Was Founded Upon Love.

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

The Idea That The Sole Aim Of Punishment Is To Prevent Crime Is Obviously Grounded Upon The Theory That Crime Can Be Prevented, Which Is Almost As Dubious As The Notion That Poverty Can Be Prevented.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

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

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

Watching Two Women Kiss Is Like Watching Two Prizefighters Shake Hands.

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

The Highfalutin Aims Of Democracy, Whether Real Or Imaginary, Are Always Assumed To Be Identical With Its Achievements. This, Of Course, Is Sheer Hallucination. Not One Of Those Aims, Not Even The Aim Of Giving Every Adult A Vote, Has Been Realized. It Has No More Made Men Wise And Free Than Christianity Has Made Them Good.

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

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

A Sound American Is Simply One Who Has Put Out Of His Mind All Doubts And Questionings, And Who Accepts Instantly, And As Incontrovertible Gospel, The Whole Body Of Official Doctrine Of His Day, Whatever It May Be And No Matter How Often It May Change. The Instant He Challenges It, No Matter How Timorously And Academically, He Ceases By That Much To Be A Loyal And Creditable Citizen Of The Republic.

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

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

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 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.

The Great Masses Of Men, Though Theoretically Free, Are Seen To Submit Supinely To Oppression And Exploitation Of A Hundred Abhorrent Sorts. Have They No Means Of Resistance? Obviously They Have. The Worst Tyrant, Even Under Democratic Plutocracy, Has But One Throat To Slit. The Moment The Majority Decided To Overthrow Him He Would Be Overthrown. But The Majority Lacks The Resolution; It Cannot Imagine Taking The Risks.

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.

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

Men Become Civilized, Not In Proportion To Their Willingness To Believe, But In Their Readiness To Doubt.

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.

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

A Professional Politician Is A Professionally Dishonorable Man. In Order To Get Anywhere Near High Office He Has To Make So Many Compromises And Submit To So Many Humiliations That He Becomes Indistinguishable From A Streetwalker.

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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.

Women Decide The Larger Questions Of Life Correctly And Quickly, Not Because They Are Lucky Guessers, Not Because They Are Divinely Inspired, Not Because They Practise A Magic Inherited From Savagery, But Simply And Solely Because They Have Sense. They See At A Glance What Most Men Could Not See With Searchlights And Telescopes.... They Are The Supreme Realists Of The Race.

Temptation Is An Irresistible Force At Work On A Movable Body.

People Constantly Speak Of 'the Government' Doing This Or That, As They Might Speak Of God Doing It. But The Government Is Really Nothing But A Group Of Men, And Usually They Are Very Inferior Men. They May Have Some Better Man Working For Them, But They Themselves Are Seldom Worthy Of Any Respect.

Nature Abhors A Moron.

All The Political Seers And Sorcerers Seem To Be Agreed That The Coming Presidential Campaign Will Be Full Of Bitterness, And That Most Of It Will Be Caused By Religion. I Count Prohibition As A Part Of Religion, For It Has Surely Become So In The United States. The Prohibitionists, Seeing All Their Other Arguments Destroyed By The Logic Of Events, Have Fallen Back Upon The Mystical Doctrine That God Is Somehow On Their Side, And That Opposing Them Thus Takes On The Character Of Blasphemy.

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 Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

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 Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

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

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.

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

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

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

Wherever I Sit Is The Head Of The Table.

The Difference Between The Smartest Dog And The Stupidest Man - Say A Tennessee Holy Roller - Is Really Very Small.

I Roll Out Of My Couch Every Morning With The More Agreeable Expectations.

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

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.

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

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.

On The One Hand, We May Tell The Truth, Regardless Of Consequences, And On The Other Hand We May Mellow It And Sophisticate It To Make It Humane And Tolerable.

Telling The Truth

The Great Secret Of Happiness In Love Is To Be Glad That The Other Fellow Married Her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change Is Not Progress.

Save Among Politicians It Is No Longer Necessary For Any Educated American To Profess Belief In Thirteenth Century Ideas

Here Is One Of The Fundamental Defects Of American Fiction--perhaps The One Character That Sets It Off Sharply From All Other Known Kinds Of Contemporary Fiction. It Habitually Exhibits, Not A Man Of Delicate Organization In Revolt Against The Inexplicable Tragedy Of Existence, But A Man Of Low Sensibilities And Elemental Desires Yielding Himself Gladly To His Environment, And So Achieving What, Under A Third-rate Civilization, Passes For Success. To Get On: This Is The Aim. To Weigh And Reflect, To Doubt And Rebel: This Is The Thing To Be Avoided.

Contemporary Fiction

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

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

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

Citizenship In New York Is Now Worth No More Than Citizenship In Arkansas, For It Is Open To Any Applicant From The Marshes Of Bessarabia, And, Still Worse, To Any Applicant From Arkansas.

There Is Always An Easy Solution To Every Problem - Neat, Plausible, And Wrong.

Simple Solutions

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 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.

A Living Language Is Like A Man Suffering Incessantly From Small Hemorrhages, And What It Needs Above All Else Is Constant Transactions Of New Blood From Other Tongues. The Day The Gates Go Up, That Day It Begins To Die.

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

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

All Government, Of Course, Is Against Liberty.

What Reason Is There For Believing That A High Death Rate, In Itself, Is Undesirable? To My Knowledge None Whatever. The Plain Fact Is That, If It Be Suitably Selective, It Is Extremely Salubrious. Suppose It Could Be So Arranged That It Ran To 100% A Year Among Politicians, Executive Secretaries, Drive Chairmen, And The Homicidally Insane? What Rational Man Would Object?

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

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.

Government, Like Any Other Organism, Refuses To Acquiesce In Its Own Extinction. This Refusal, Of Course, Involves The Resistance To Any Effort To Diminish Its Powers And Prerogatives.

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.

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

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

Congress Consists Of One-third, More Or Less, Scoundrels; Two-thirds, More Or Less, Idiots; And Three-thirds, More Or Less, Poltroons.

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.

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

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

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

Legend: A Lie That Has Attained The Dignity Of Age.

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.

One Of The Laudable By-products Of The Freudian Quackery Is The Discovery That Lying, In Most Cases, Is Involuntary And Inevitable--that The Liar Can No More Avoid It Than He Can Avoid Blinking His Eyes When A Light Flashes Or Jumping When A Bomb Goes Off Behind Him.

The Catholic Clergy Seldom Bother To Make Their Arguments Plausible; It Is Plain That They Have Little Respect For Human Intelligence, And Indeed Little Belief In Its Existence.

I Believe That It Is Better To Tell The Truth Than To Lie. I Believe That It Is Better To Be Free Than To Be A Slave. And I Believe That It Is Better To Know Than Be Ignorant.

God Must Love The Rich Or He Wouldn't Divide So Much Among So Few Of Them.

What Chiefly Distinguishes The Daily Press Is Its Incurable Fear Of Ideas, Its Constant Effort To Evade The Discussion Of Fundamentals By Translating All Issues Into A Few Elemental Fears, Its Incessant Reduction Of All Reflection To Mere Emotion.

A Prohibitionist Is The Sort Of Man One Couldn't Care To Drink With, Even If He Drank.

Culture Itself Is Neither Education Nor Law-making: It Is An Atmosphere And A Heritage.

If I Had My Way, Any Man Guilty Of Golf Would Be Barred From Any Public Office In The United States And The Families Of The Breed Would Be Shipped Off To The White Slave Corrals Of Argentina.

My Belief In Free Speech Is So Profound That I Am Seldom Tempted To Deny It To The Other Fellow. Nor Do I Make Any Effort To Differentiate Between The Other Fellow Right And That Other Fellow Wrong, For I Am Convinced That Free Speech Is Worth Nothing Unless It Includes A Full Franchise To Be Foolish And Even...malicious.

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.

There Is No Record In Human History Of A Happy Philosopher: They Exist Only In Romantic Legend.

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

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

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.

Immortality Is The Condition Of A Dead Man Who Doesn't Believe He Is Dead

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.

I Drink Exactly As Much As I Want, And One Drink More.

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.

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

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.

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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

At Eight Or Nine, I Suppose Intelligence Is No More Than A Small Spot Of Light On The Floor Of A Large And Murky Room.

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

The Only Way To Reconcile Science And Religion Is To Set Up Something Which Is Not Science And Something That Is Not Religion.

Science And Religion

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.

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

[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.

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

One 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.

The Common Man Knows Exactly What He Wants...and Deserves To Get It Good And Hard.

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

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.

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