Background Image

...

Setting Aside The Vast Herd Which Shows No Definable Character At All, It Seems To Me That The Minority Distinguished By What Is Commonly Regarded As An Excess Of Sin Is Very Much More Admirable Than The Minority Distinguished By An Excess Of Virtue. My Experience Of The World Has Taught Me That The Average Wine-bibbler Is A Far Better Fellow Than The Average Prohibitionist, And That The Average Rogue Is Better Company Than The Average Poor Drudge, And That The Worst White-slave Trader Of My Acquaintance Is A Decenter Man Than The Best Vice Crusader.

-H. L. Mencken

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Setting Aside The Vast

H. L. Mencken

...

Setting Aside The Vast Herd Which Shows No Definable Character At All, It Seems To Me That The Minority Distinguished By What Is Commonly Regarded As An Excess Of Sin Is Very Much More Admirable Than The Minority Distinguished By An Excess Of Virtue. My Experience Of The World Has Taught Me That The Average Wine-bibbler Is A Far Better Fellow Than The Average Prohibitionist, And That The Average Rogue Is Better Company Than The Average Poor Drudge, And That The Worst White-slave Trader Of My Acquaintance Is A Decenter Man Than The Best Vice Crusader.

Views: 7

Topic

More From H. L. Mencken

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.

The Man Who Boasts That He Habitually Tells The Truth Is Simply A Man With No Respect For It. It Is Not A Thing To Be Thrown About Loosely, Like Small Change; It Is Something To Be Cherished And Hoarded And Disbursed Only When Absolutely Necessary. The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

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

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?

It Is Not A Sign Of Communal Well-being When Men Turn To Their Government To Execute All Their Business For Them, But Rather A Sign Of Decay, As In The United States Today. The State, Indeed, Is But One Of The Devices That A Really Healthy Community Sets Up To Manage Its Affairs.

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.

All The Charming And Beautiful Things, From The Song Of Songs, To Bouillabaisse, And From The Nine Beethoven Symphonies To The Martini Cocktail, Have Been Given To Humanity By Men Who, When The Hour Came, Turned From Tap Water To Something With Color In It, And More In It Than Mere Oxygen And Hydrogen.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Military Caste Did Not Originate As A Party Of Patriots, But As A Party Of Bandits

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

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.

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

The Puritan, Of Course, Is Not Entirely Devoid Of Aesthetic Feeling. He Has A Taste For Good Form; He Responds To Style; He Is Even Capable Of Something Approaching A Purely Aesthetic Emotion. But He Fears This Aesthetic Emotion As An Insinuating Distraction From His Chief Business In Life: The Sober Consideration Of The All-important Problem Of Conduct. Art Is A Temptation, A Seduction, A Lorelei, And The Good Man May Safely Have Traffic With It When It Is Broken To Moral Uses--in Other Words, When Its Innocence Is Pumped Out Of It, And It Is Purged Of Gusto.

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies. When They Fail To Come Off Its Clergy Simply Say That They Will Be Realized Later On. Thus, If We Have Another Boom, They Will Argue That The Collapse Of Capitalism Is Only Postponed. The Fact That The Greatest Booms Ever Heard Of Followed Marx's Formal Prophecy Of The Downfall Of Capitalism Is Already Forgotten, Just As Millions Have Long Since Forgotten The Early Christian Prophecy That The End Of The World Was At Hand. The First Christians Accepted Postponements As Docilely As The Communists Of Today.

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

Happiness Is Peace After Strife, The Overcoming Of Difficulties, The Feeling Of Security And Well-being. The Only Really Happy Folk Are Married Women And Single Men.

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

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

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

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

The Jews Could Be Put Down Very Plausibly As The Most Unpleasant Race Ever Heard Of. As Commonly Encountered They Lack Any Of The Qualities That Mark The Civilized Man: Courage, Dignity, Incorruptibility, Ease, Confidence. They Have Vanity Without Pride, Voluptuousness Without Taste, And Learning Without Wisdom. Their Fortitude, Such As It Is, Is Wasted Upon Puerile Objects, And Their Charity Is Mainly A Form Of Display.

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.

The Fact That I Have No Remedy For All The Sorrows Of The World Is No Reason For My Accepting Yours. It Simply Supports The Strong Probability That Yours Is A Fake.

Religion Is A Conceited Effort To Deny The Most Obvious Realities.

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

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

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

A Man May Be A Fool And Not Know It, But Not If He Is Married.

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

There Is No Record In The History Of A Nation That Ever Gained Anything Valuable By Being Unable To Defend Itself.

The True Function Of Art Is To Criticize, Embellish And Edit Nature… The Artist Is A Sort Of Impassioned Proof-reader, Blue Penciling The Bad Spelling Of God.

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

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.

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?

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

No Politician Is Ever Benefited By Saving Money; It Is Spending It That Makes Him.

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

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.

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

Funny Valentines Day

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.

The Longest Sentence You Can Form With Two Words Is: I Do.

The Human Race Is Divided Into Two Sharply Differentiated And Mutually Antagonistic Classes: A Smal L Minority That Plays With Ideas And Is Capable Of Taking Them In, And A Vast Majority That Finds Them Painful, And Is Thus Arrayed Against Them, And Against All Who Have Traffic With Them.

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

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

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.

Of All The Classes Of Men, I Dislike The Most Those Who Make Their Livings By Talking - Actors, Clergymen, Politicians, Pedagogues, And So On. .... It Is Almost Impossible To Imagine A Talker Who Sticks To The Facts. Carried Away By The Sound Of His Own Voice And The Applause From The Groundlings, He Makes Inevitably The Jump From Logic To Mere Rhetoric.

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

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.

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.

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

The Liberation Of The Human Mind Has Never Been Furthered By Dunderheads; It Has Been Furthered By Gay Fellows Who Heaved Dead Cats Into Sanctuaries And Then Went Roistering Down The Highways Of The World, Proving To All Men That Doubt, After All, Was Safe - That The God In The Sanctuary Was Finite In His Power And Hence A Fraud. One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

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

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

I Have Long Been Convinced That The Idea Of Liberty Is Abhorrent To Most Human Beings. What They Want Is Security, Not Freedom. Thus It Seldom Causes Any Public Indignation When An Enterprising Tyrant Claps Down On One Of His Enemies. To Most Men It Seems A Natural Proceeding.

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.

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

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

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

No One Hates His Job So Heartily As A Farmer.

Pastor: One Employed By The Wicked To Prove To Them By His Example That Virtue Doesn't Pay.

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

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

The Art Of Writing, Like The Art Of Love, Runs All The Way From A Kind Of Routine Hard To Distinguish From Piling Bricks To A Kind Of Frenzy Closely Related To Delirium Tremens.

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.

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

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

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.

Science Is Unflinchingly Deterministic, And It Has Begun To Force Its Determinism Into Morals. On Some Shining Tomorrow A Psychoanalyst May Be Put Into The Box To Prove That Perjury Is Simply A Compulsion Neurosis, Like Beating Time With The Foot At A Concert Or Counting The Lampposts Along The Highway.

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

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.

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

Every Step In Human Progress, From The First Feeble Stirrings In The Abyss Of Time, Has Been Opposed By The Great Majority Of Men. Every Valuable Thing That Has Been Added To The Store Of Man's Possessions Has Been Derided By Them When It Was New, And Destroyed By Them When They Had The Power. They Have Fought Every New Truth Ever Heard Of, And They Have Killed Every Truth-seeker Who Got Into Their Hands.

I Never Agree With Communists Or Any Other Kind Of Kept Men.

The Way To Deal With Superstition Is Not To Be Polite To It, But To Tackle It With All Arms, And So Rout It, Cripple It, And Make It Forever Infamous And Ridiculous.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Liberty Is Of Small Value To The Lower Third Of Humanity. They Greatly Prefer Security, Which Means Protection By Some Class Above Them. They Are Always In Favor Of Despots Who Promise To Feed Them. The Only Liberty An Inferior Man Really Cherishes Is The Liberty To Quit Work, Stretch Out In The Sun, And Scratch Himself.

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

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

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 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.

Some Boys Go To College And Eventually Succeed In Getting Out. Others Go To College And Never Succeed In Getting Out. The Latter Are Called Professors.

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.

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.

Science, At Bottom, Is Really Anti-intellectual. It Always Distrusts Pure Reason, And Demands The Production Of Objective Fact.

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

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

Original Thought

The Ideal State For A Philosopher, Indeed, Is Celibacy Tempered By Polygamy.

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

The War On Privilege Will Never End. Its Next Grat Campaign Will Be Against The Special Privileges Of The Underprivileged.

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.

A Progressive Is One Who Is In Favor Of More Taxes Instead Of Less, More Bureaus And Jobholders, More Paternalism And Meddling, More Regulation Of Private Affairs And Less Liberty. In General, He Would Be Inclined To Regard The Repeal Of Any Tax As Outrageous.

Platitude: An Idea (a) That Is Admitted To Be True By Everyone, And (b) That Is Not True.

The Late William Jennings Bryan, L.l.d., Always Had One Great Advantage In Controversy; He Was Never Burdened With An Understanding Of His Opponent's Case.

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.

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?

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

Unquestionably, There Is Progress. The Average American Now Pays Out Twice As Much In Taxes As He Formerly Got In Wages.

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

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

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.

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.

When You Sympathize With A Married Woman You Either Make Two Enemies Or Gain One Wife And One Friend.

Richard Strauss--old Home Week In Gomorrah

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

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

Fame: An Embalmer Trembling With Stage Fright.

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

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

The Trouble With Communism Is The Communists, Just As The Trouble With Christianity Is The Christians.

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

We Are Here And It Is Now. Further Than That, All Human Knowledge Is Moonshine.

We Must Be Willing To Pay A Price For Freedom.

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

The Urge To Save Humanity Is Almost Always A False Front For The Urge To Rule.

[science] Must Be Amoral By Its Very Nature: The Minute It Begins Separating Facts Into The Two Categories Of Good Ones And Bad Ones It Ceases To Be Science And Becomes A Mere Nuisance, Like Theology.

When I Die, I Shall Be Content To Vanish Into Nothingness.... No Show, However Good, Could Conceivably Be Good Forever I Do Not Believe In Immortality, And Have No Desire For It.

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

I Do Not Believe In Democracy, But I Am Perfectly Willing To Admit That It Provides The Only Really Amusing Form Of Government Ever Endured By Mankind.

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

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

It Is Now Quite Lawful For A Catholic Woman To Avoid Pregnancy By A Resort To Mathematics, Though She Is Still Forbidden To Resort To Physics Or Chemistry.

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

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

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

Equality Before The Law Is Probably Forever Unattainable. It Is A Noble Ideal, But It Can Never Be Realized, For What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

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.

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

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.

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

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.

Don't Overestimate The Decency Of The Human Race.

I Hope I Need Not Confess That A Large Part Of My Stock In Trade Consists Of Platitudes Rescued From The Cobwebbed Shelves Of Yesterday... This Borrowing And Refurbishing Of Shop-worn Goods, As A Matter Of Fact, Is The Invariable Habit Of Traders In Ideas, At All Times And Everywhere. It Is Not, However, That All The Conceivable Human Notions Have Been Thought Out; It Is Simply, To Be Quite Honest, That The Sort Of Men Who Volunteer To Think Out New Ones Seldom, If Ever, Have Wind Enough For A Full Day's Work.

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

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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.

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

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

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

Two Simple Principles Lie At The Bottom Of The Whole Matter, And They May Be Precipitated Into Two Rules. The First Is That, When There Is A Choice, The Milder Drink Is Always The Better-not Merely The Safer But The Better. The Second Is That No Really Enlightened Drinker Ever Takes A Drink At A Time When He Has Any Work To Do. There Is, Of Course, More To It Than This; But These Are Sufficient For The Beginner, And Even The Virtuoso Never Outgrows Them.

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

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.

After All, All He Did Was String Together A Lot Of Old, Well-known Quotations.

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.

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.

The Aim Of Public Education Is Not To Spread Enlightenment At All; It Is Simply To Reduce As Many Individuals As Possible To The Same Safe Level, To Breed A Standard Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

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

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

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

[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.

It Is Difficult To Believe That Even Idiots Ever Succumbed To Such Transparent Contradictions, To Such Gaudy Processions Of Mere Counter-words, To So Vast And Obvious A Nonsensicalitysentence After Sentence That Has No Apparent Meaning At All--stuff Quite As Bad As The Worst Bosh Of Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Men Have A Much Better Time Of It Than Women. For One Thing, They Marry Later; For Another Thing, They Die Earlier.

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

Nobody Ever Went Broke Underestimating The Taste Of The American Public.

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.

Women Hate Revolutions And Revolutionists. They Like Men Who Are Docile, And Well-regarded At The Bank, And Never Late At Meals.

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.

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.

The Notion That Science Does Not Concern Itself With First Causes - That It Leaves The Field To Theology Or Metaphysics, And Confines Itself To Mere Effects - This Notion Has No Support In The Plain Facts. If It Could, Science Would Explain The Origin Of Life On Earth At Once - And There Is Every Reason To Believe That It Will Do So On Some Not Too Remote Tomorrow. To Argue That Gaps In Knowledge Which Will Confront The Seeker Must Be Filled, Not By Patient Inquiry, But By Intuition Or Revelation, Is Simply To Give Ignorance A Gratuitous And Preposterous Dignity.

To The Extent That I Am Genuinely Educated, I Am Suspicious Of All The Things That The Average Citizen Believes And The Average Pedagogue Teaches.

Next To The Semi-colon, Quotation Marks Seem To Be The Chief Butts Of Reformatory Ardor.

Quotation Marks

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

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

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.

The Plain Fact Is That Education Is Itself A Form Of Propaganda - A Deliberate Scheme To Outfit The Pupil, Not With The Capacity To Weigh Ideas, But With A Simple Appetite For Gulping Ideas Ready-made. The Aim Is To Make 'good' Citizens, Which Is To Say, Docile And Uninquisitive Citizens.

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.

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

Every Normal Man Must Be Tempted, At Times, To Spit On His Hands, Hoist The Black Flag, And Begin Slitting Throats.

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

Opera In English Is, In The Main, Just About As Sensible As Baseball In Italian.

Women Have A Hard Enough Time In This World: Telling Them The Truth Would Be Too Cruel.

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.

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.

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

Kipling, The Grandson Of A Methodist Preacher, Reveals The Tin-pot Evangelist With Increasing Clarity As Youth And Its Ribaldries Pass Away And He Falls Back Upon His Fundamentals.

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

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.

Most People Are Unable To Write Because They Are Unable To Think, And They Are Unable To Think Because They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Do So, Just As They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Fly Over The Moon.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A Galileo Could No More Be Elected President Of The United States Than He Could Be Elected Pope Of Rome. Both High Posts Are Reserved For Men Favored By God With An Extraordinary Genius For Swathing The Bitter Facts Of Life In Bandages Of Self-illusion.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

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

Trending Author

John Paul Jones

James C. Collins

Category