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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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Politics, Under A Democracy,

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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

All Government, Of Course, Is Against Liberty.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

Of Government, At Least In Democratic States, It May Be Said Briefly That It Is An Agency Engaged Wholesale, And As A Matter Of Solemn Duty, In The Performance Of Acts Which All Self-respecting Individuals Refrain From As A Matter Of Common Decency.

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.

The Kind Of Man Who Demands That Government Enforce His Ideas Is Always The Kind Whose Ideas Are Idiotic.

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

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

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

The Central Belief Of Every Moron Is That He Is The Victim Of A Mysterious Conspiracy Against His Common Rights And True Deserts.

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.

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.

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.

The Course Of The United States In World War Ii, I Said, Was Dishonest, Dishonorable, And Ignominious, And The Sunpapers, By Supporting Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, Shared In This Disgrace.

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

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

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

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

Whenever A Husband And Wife Begin To Discuss Their Marriage They Are Giving Evidence At A Coroner's Inquest.

Consider Him In His Highest Incarnation: The University Professor. What Is His Function? Simply To Pass On To Fresh Generations Of Numskulls A Body Of So-called Knowledge That Is Fragmentary, Unimportant, And, In Large Part, Untrue. His Whole Professional Activity Is Circumscribed By The Prejudices, Vanities And Avarices Of His University Trustees, I.e., A Committee Of Soap-boilers, Nail Manufacturers, Bank-directors And Politicians. The Moment He Offends These Vermin He Is Undone. He Cannot So Much As Think Aloud Without Running A Risk Of Having Them Fan His Pantaloons.

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

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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 Basic Fact About Human Existence Is Not That It Is A Tragedy, But That It Is A Bore. It Is Not So Much A War As An Endless Standing In Line.

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

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

It Is Almost Impossible For An Anglo-saxon To Write Of Sex Without Being Dirty.

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.

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

Simple Solutions

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

Great Achievement

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Every Reader Of The Dreiser Novels Must Cherish Astounding Specimens--of Awkward, Platitudinous Marginalia, Of Whole Scenes Spoiled By Bad Writing, Of Phrases As Brackish As So Many Lumps Of Sodium Hyposulphite.

In This World Of Sin And Sorrow There Is Always Something To Be Thankful For; As For Me, I Rejoice That I Am Not A Republican.

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

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.

Fame: An Embalmer Trembling With Stage Fright.

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

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

A Poet More Than Thirty Years Old Is Simply An Overgrown Child.

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.

Debussy--a Pretty Girl With One Blue Eye And One Brown One.

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

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

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

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

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

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The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal.

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All [zoos] Actually Offer To The Public In Return For The Taxes Spent Upon Them Is A Form Of Idle And Witless Amusement, Compared To Which A Visit To A Penitentiary, Or Even To A State Legislature In Session, Is Informing, Stimulating And Ennobling.

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

[referring To Fdr] If He Became Convinced Tomorrow That Coming Out For Cannibalism Would Get Him The Votes He Needs So Sorely, He Would Begin Fattening A Missionary In The White House Yard Come Wednesday.

If, After I Depart This Vale, You Ever Remember Me And Have Thought To Please My Ghost, Forgive Some Sinner And Wink Your Eye At Some Homely Girl.

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

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.

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.

Elections Are Futures Markets In Stolen Property.

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

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

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.

The Chief Contribution Of Protestantism To Human Thought Is Its Massive Proof That God Is A Bore.

There Are Two Kinds Of Music; German Music And Bad Music.

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

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

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

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.

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

To The Best Of My Knowledge And Belief, The Average American Newspaper, Even Of The So-called Better Sort, Is Not Only Quite As Bad As Upton Sinclair Says It Is, But 10 Times Worse, 10 Times As Ignorant, 10 Times As Unfair And Tyrannical, 10 Times As Complaisant And Pusillanimous, And 10 Times As Devious, Hypocritical, Disingenuous, Deceitful, Pharisaical, Pecksniffian, Fraudulent, Slippery, Unscrupulous, Perfidious, Lewd And Dishonest.

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

I Am One Of The Few Goyim Who Have Ever Actually Tackled The Talmud. I Suppose You Now Expect Me To Add That It Is A Profound And Noble Work, Worthy Of Hard Study By All Other Goyims. Unhappily, My Report Must Differ From This Expectation. It Seems To Me, Save For A Few Bright Spots, To Be Quite Indistinguishable From Rubbish.

It Is Impossible To Imagine The Universe Run By A Wise, Just And Omnipotent God, But It Is Quite Easy To Imagine It Run By A Board Of Gods.

Faith May Be Defined Briefly As An Illogical Belief In The Occurrence Of The Improbable.

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.

Liberals Have Many Tails And Chase Them All.

Penetrating So Many Secrets, We Cease To Believe In The Unknowable. But There It Sits Nevertheless, Calmly Licking Its Chops

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

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

The Townspeople Are Morons, Yokels, Peasants And Genus Homo Boobiensis...surrounded By Gaping Primates From The Upland Vallies.

The Most Curious Social Convention Of The Great Age In Which We Live Is The One To The Effect That Religious Opinions Should Be Respected. Its Evil Effects Must Be Plain Enough To Everyone. All It Accomplishes Is (a) To Throw A Veil Of Sanctity About Ideas That Violate Every Intellectual Decency, And (b) To Make Every Theologian A Sort Of Chartered Libertine. No Doubt It Is Mainly To Blame For The Appalling Slowness With Which Really Sound Notions Make Their Way In The World.

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.

It Is Impossible To Think Of A Man Of Any Actual Force And Originality, Universally Recognized As Having Those Qualities, Who Spent His Whole Life Appraising And Describing The Work Of Other Men.

Unionism, Seldom If Ever, Uses Such Powers As It Has To Ensure Better Work; Almost Always It Devotes A Large Part Of That Power To Safeguard Bad Work.

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

Jealousy Is A Keen Observer, But Looks For All The Wrong Signs.

Has The Art Of Politics No Apparent Utility? Does It Appear To Be Unqualifiedly Ratty, Raffish, Sordid, Obscene, And Low Down, Andits Salient Virtuosi A Gang Of Unmitigated Scoundrels? Then Let Us Not Forget Its High Capacity To Soothe And Tickle The Midriff, Its Incomparable Services As A Maker Of Entertainment.

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality.

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

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

Democracies Have

All Successful Newspapers Are Ceaselessly Querulous And Bellicose. They Never Defend Anyone Or Anything If They Can Help It; If The Job Is Forced On Them, They Tackle It By Denouncing Someone Or Something Else.

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

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

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

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

The True Bureaucrat Is A Man Of Really Remarkable Talents. He Writes A Kind Of English That Is Unknown Elsewhere In The World, And An Almost Infinite Capacity For Forming Complicated And Unworkable Rules.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

I Have Often Argued That A Poet More Than Thirty Years Old Is Simply An Overgrown Child. I Begin To Suspect That There May Be Some Truth In It.

It Is [a Politician's] Business To Get And Hold His Job At All Costs. If He Can Hold It By Lying, He Will Hold It By Lying; If Lying Peters Out, He Will Try To Hold It By Embracing New Truths. His Ear Is Ever Close To The Ground.

If The Average Man Is Made In God's Image, Then A Man Such As Beethoven Or Aristotle Is Plainly Superior To God, And So God May Be Jealous Of Him, And Eager To See His Superiority Perish With His Bodily Frame.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Misogynist: A Man Who Hates Women As Much As Women Hate One Another.

The More Noisy Negro Leaders, By Depicting All Whites As Natural And Implacable Enemies To Their Race, Have Done It A Great Disservice. Large Numbers Of Whites Who Were Formerly Very Friendly To It, And Willing To Go To Great Lengths To Help It, Are Now Resentful And Suspicious.

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.

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

Creator: A Comedian Whose Audience Is Afraid To Laugh.

The Martini: The Only American Invention As Perfect As The Sonnet.

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

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

Popularity--the Capacity For Listening Sympathetically When Men Boast Of Their Wives And Women Complain Of Their Husbands.

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.

When I Think Of Anything Properly Describable As A Beautiful Idea, It Is Always In The Form Of Music. I Have Written And Printed Probably 10,000,000 Words In English But All The Same I Shall Die An Inarticulate Man, For My Best Ideas Beset Me In A Language I Know Only Vaguely And Speak Only As A Child.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out For Himself.

The Jews Fastened Their Religion Upon The Western World, Not Because It Was More Reasonable Than The Religions Of Their Contemporaries - As A Matter Of Fact, It Was Vastly Less Reasonable Than Many Of Them - But Because It Was Far More Poetical.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Writing Books Is Certainly A Most Unpleasant Occupation. It Is Lonesome, Unsanitary, And Maddening. Many Authors Go Crazy.

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

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.

The Typical Lawmaker Of Today Is A Man Wholly Devoid Of Principle - A Mere Counter In A Grotesque And Knavish Game. If The Right Pressure Could Be Applied To Him, He Would Be Cheerfully In Favor Of Polygamy, Astrology Or Cannibalism.

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.

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

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.

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

I Believe There Is A Limit Beyond Which Free Speech Cannot Go, But It's A Limit That's Very Seldom Mentioned. It's The Point Where Free Speech Begins To Collide With The Right To Privacy. I Don't Think There Are Any Other Conditions To Free Speech. I've Got A Right To Say And Believe Anything I Please, But I Haven't Got A Right To Press It On Anybody Else. .... Nobody's Got A Right To Be A Nuisance To His Neighbors.

The Real Charm Of The United States Is That It Is The Only Comic Country Ever Heard Of.

American Journalism (like The Journalism Of Any Other Country) Is Predominantly Paltry And Worthless. Its Pretensions Are Enormous, But Its Achievements Are Insignificant.

Moral Certainty Is Always A Sign Of Cultural Inferiority. The More Uncivilized The Man, The Surer He Is That He Knows Precisely What Is Right And What Is Wrong. All Human Progress, Even In Morals, Has Been The Work Of Men Who Have Doubted The Current Moral Values, Not Of Men Who Have Whooped Them Up And Tried To Enforce Them. The Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant.

The Legislature, Like The Executive, Has Ceased To Be Even The Creature Of The People: It Is The Creature Of Pressure Groups, And Most Of Them, It Must Be Manifest, Are Of Dubious Wisdom And Even More Dubious Honesty. 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. The Typical Lawmaker Of Today Is A Man Wholly Devoid Of Principle...

I Have Lived In One House In Baltimore For Nearly Forty-five Years. It Has Changed In That Time, As I Have - But Somehow It Still Remains The Same. No Conceivable Decorator's Masterpiece Could Give Me The Same Ease. It Is As Much A Part Of Me As My Two Hands. If I Had To Leave It I'd Be As Certainly Crippled As If I Lost A Leg.

War May Make A Fool Of Man, But It By No Means Degrades Him; On The Contrary, It Tends To Exalt Him, And Its Net Effects Are Much Like Those Of Motherhood On Women.

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

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

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

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

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

There's Really No Point To Voting. If It Made Any Difference, It Would Probably Be Illegal.

Socialism: Nothing More Than The Theory That The Slave Is Always More Virtuous Than His Master.

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.

In My Day A Reporter Who Took An Assignment Was Wholly On His Own Until He Got Back To The Office, And Even Then He Was Little Molested Until His Copy Was Turned In At The Desk; Today He Tends To Become Only A Homunculus At The End Of A Telephone Wire, And The Reduction Of His Observations To Prose Is Commonly Farmed Out To Literary Castrati Who Never Leave The Office, And Hence Never Feel The Wind Of The World In Their Faces Or See Anything With Their Own Eyes.

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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.

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

It Is Inaccurate To Say That I Hate Everything. I Am Strongly In Favor Of Common Sense, Common Honesty, And Common Decency. This Makes Me Forever Ineligible For Public Office.

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

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

Thanksgiving Day

What Is Any Political Campaign Save A Concerted Effort To Turn Out A Set Of Politicians Who Are Admittedly Bad And Put In A Set Who Are Thought To Be Better. The Former Assumption, I Believe Is Always Sound; The Latter Is Just As Certainly False. For 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.

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

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

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.

What Are The Hallmarks Of A Competent Writer Of Fiction? The First, It Seems To Me, Is That He Should Be Immensely Interested In Human Beings, And Have An Eye Sharp Enough To See Into Them, And A Hand Clever Enough To Draw Them As They Are. The Second Is That He Should Be Able To Set Them In Imaginary Situations Which Display The Contents Of Their Psyches Effectively, And So Carry His Reader Swiftly And Pleasantly From Point To Point Of What Is Called A Good Story.

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

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

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.

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.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

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

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

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.

How Little It Takes To Make Life Unbearable: A Pebble In The Shoe, A Cockroach In The Spaghetti, A Woman's Laugh.

Genius: The Ability To Prolong One's Childhood.

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.

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

A Sense Of Humor Always Withers In The Presence Of The Messianic Delusion, Like Justice And The Truth In Front Of Patriotic Passion.

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M. F. K. Fisher

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