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The Federal [bank Deposit] Insurance Scheme Has Worked Up To Now Simply And Solely Because There Have Been Very Few Bank Failures. The Next Time We Have A Pestilence Of Them It Will Come To Grief Quickly Enough, And If The Good Banks Escape Ruin With The Bad Ones It Will Be Only Because The Taxpayer Foots The Bill.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Federal [bank Deposit]

H. L. Mencken

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The Federal [bank Deposit] Insurance Scheme Has Worked Up To Now Simply And Solely Because There Have Been Very Few Bank Failures. The Next Time We Have A Pestilence Of Them It Will Come To Grief Quickly Enough, And If The Good Banks Escape Ruin With The Bad Ones It Will Be Only Because The Taxpayer Foots The Bill.

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

During Many A Single Week, I Daresay, More Money Is Spent In New York Upon Useless And Evil Things Than Would Suffice To Run The Kingdom Of Denmark For A Year.

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

It Seems To Me That Society Usually Wins. There Are, To Be Sure, Free Spirits In The World, But Their Freedom, In The Last Analysis, Is Not Much Greater Than That Of A Canary In A Cage. They May Leap From Perch To Perch; They May Bathe And Guzzle At Their Will; They May Flap Their Wings And Sing. But They Are Still In The Cage, And Soon Or Late It Conquers Them.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

Who Will Argue That 98.6 Farenheit Is The Right Temperature For Man? As For Me, I Decline To Do It. It May Be That We Are All Actually Freezing Hence The Pervading Stupidity Of Mankind. At 110 Or 115 Degrees Even Archbishops Might Be Intelligent.

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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.

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

I Never Lecture, Not Because I Am Shy Or A Bad Speaker, But Simply Because I Detest The Sort Of People Who Go To Lectures And Don't Want To Meet Them.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Henry James Would Have Been Vastly Improved As A Novelist By A Few Whiffs Of The Chicago Stockyard.

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

The Truth Is That Christian Theology, Like Every Other Theology, Is Not Only Opposed To The Scientific Spirit; It Is Also Opposed To All Other Attempts At Rational Thinking.

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

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

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.

All American Wars (except The Civil War) Have Been Fought With The Odds Overwhelmingly In Favor Of The Americans. In The History Of Armed Combat Such Affairs As The Mexican And Spanish-american Wars Must Be Ranked, Not As Wars At All, But As Organized Assassinations. In The Two World Wars, No American Faced A Bullet Until His Adversaries Had Been Worn Down By Years Of Fighting Others.

Nietzsche, To The End Of His Days, Remained A Russian Pastor's Son, And Hence Two-thirds Of A Puritan; He Erected His War Upon Holiness, Toward The End, Into A Sort Of Holy War.

There Is Always A Well-known Solution To Every Human Problem - Neat, Plausible, And Wrong.

Funny Inspirational

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Government, In Its Very Essence, Is Opposed To All Increase In Knowledge. Its Tendency Is Always Towards Permanence And Against Change...[t]he Progress Of Humanity, Far From Being The Result Of Government, Has Been Made Entirely Without Its Aid And In The Face If Its Constant And Bitter Opposition.

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

It Is Not Materialism That Is The Chief Curse Of The World, As Pastors Teach, But Idealism. Men Get Into Trouble By Taking Their Visions And Hallucinations Too Seriously.

College Football Is A Game Which Would Be Much More Interesting If The Faculty Played Instead Of The Students, And Even More Interesting If The Trustees Played. There Would Be A Great Increase In Broken Arms, Legs, And Necks, And Simultaneously An Appreciable Diminution In The Loss To Humanity.

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

The American People, Taking One With Another, Constitute The Most Timorous, Snivelling, Poltroonish, Ignominious Mob Of Serfs And Goosesteppers Ever Gathered Under One Flag In Christendom Since The End Of The Middle Ages.

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.

Haste Is Of The Devil. Slowness Is Of God.

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

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

The Men The American People Admire Most Extravagantly Are The Most Daring Liars; The Men They Detest Most Violently Are Those Who Try To Tell Them The Truth.

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

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

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

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

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Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

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

There Is, It Appears, A Conspiracy Of Scientists Afoot. Their Purpose Is To Break Down Religion, Propagate Immorality, And So Reduce Mankind To The Level Of Brutes. They Are The Sworn And Sinister Agents Of Beelzebub, Who Yearns To Conquer The World, And Has His Eye Especially Upon Tennessee.]

Conquer The World

An Idealist Is One Who, On Noticing That Roses Smell Better Than A Cabbage, Concludes That It Will Also Make Better Soup.

The Intellectual Heritage Of The Race Belongs To The Minority.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A Man Always Remembers His First Love With Special Tenderness, But After That He Begins To Bunch Them.

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There Are Some Politicians Who, If Their Constituents Were Cannibals, Would Promise Them Missionaries In Every Pot.

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.

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

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

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.

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

Humanitarianism

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Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly. He Is Like A Watch Of Which The Most That Can Be Said Is That Its Cosmetic Effect Is Good.

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

One Yearns Unspeakably For A Composer Who Gives Out His Pair Of Honest Themes, And Then Develops Them Unashamed, And Then Hangs A Brisk Coda To Them, And Then Shuts Up.

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

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

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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.

The Essence Of A Sound Style Is That It Cannot Be Reduced To Rules-that It Is A Living And Breathing Thing With Something Of The Devilish In It-that It Fits Its Proprietor Tightly Yet Ever So Loosely, As His Skin Fits Him. It Is, In Fact, Quite As Seriously An Integral Part Of Him As That Skin Is. . . . In Brief, A Style Is Always The Outward And Visible Symbol Of A Man, And Cannot Be Anything Else.

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

Why Assume So Glibly That The God Who Presumably Created The Universe Is Still Running It? It Is Certainly Conceivable That He May Have Finished It And Then Turned It Over To Lesser Gods To Operate.

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

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

Great Achievement

Bridges Would Not Be Safer If Only People Who Knew The Proper Definition Of A Real Number Were Allowed To Design Them.

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

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

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

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

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.

Governments, Whatever Their Pretensions Otherwise, Try To Preserve Themselves By Holding The Individual Down ... Government Itself, Indeed, May Be Reasonably Defined As A Conspiracy Against Him. Its One Permanent Aim, Whatever Its Form, Is To Hobble Him Sufficiently To Maintain Itself.

The Notion That Artists Flourish Upon Adversity And Misunderstanding, That They Are Able To Function To The Utmost In An Atmosphere Of Indifference Or Hostility - This Notion Is Nine-tenths Nonsense.

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

Government Is Actually The Worst Failure Of Civilized Man.

Suppose Two-thirds Of The Members Of The National House Of Representatives Were Dumped Into The Washington Garbage Incinerator Tomorrow, What Would We Lose To Offset Our Gain Of Their Salaries And The Salaries Of Their Parasites?

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.

I Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Do Missionaries.

One Is Conscious Of No Brave And Noble Earnestness In It, Of No Generalized Passion For Intellectual And Spiritual Adventure, Of No Organized Determination To Think Things Out. What Is There Is A Highly Self-conscious And Insipid Correctness, A Bloodless Respectability Submergence Of Matter In Manner--in Brief, What Is There Is The Feeble, Uninspiring Quality Of German Painting And English Music.

In Every Woman's Life There Is One Real And Consuming Love. But Very Few Women Guess Which One It Is.

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

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

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

The Trouble With Fighting For Human Freedom Is That One Spends Most Of One's Time Defending Scoundrels. For It Is Against Scoundrels That Oppressive Laws Are First Aimed, And Oppression Must Be Stopped At The Beginning If It Is To Be Stopped At All.

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

There Is Nothing Worse Than An Idle Hour, With No Occupation Offering. People Who Have Many Such Hours Are Simply Animals Waiting Docilely For Death. We All Come To That State Soon Or Late. It Is The Curse Of Senility.

I Can't Imagine A Genuinely Intelligent Boy Getting Much Out Of College, Even Out Of A Good College, Save It Be A Cynical Habit Of Mind.

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.

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

The Aim Of Poetry, It Appears, Is To Fill The Mind With Lofty Thoughts--not To Give It Joy, But To Give It A Grand And Somewhat Gaudy Sense Of Virtue. The Essay Is A Weapon Against The Degenerate Tendencies Of The Age. The Novel, Properly Conceived, Is A Means Of Uplifting The Spirit; Its Aim Is To Inspire, Not Merely To Satisfy The Low Curiosity Of Man In Man.

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

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.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

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

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.

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.

Say What You Will About The Ten Commandments, You Must Always Come Back To The Pleasant Fact That There Are Only Ten Of Them.

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

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.

Unsuccessful Candidates For The Presidency Should Be Quietly Hanged As A Matter Of Public Sanitation And Decorum.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

What Are The Characters That I Discern Most Clearly In The So-called Anglo-saxon Type Of Man? I May Answer At Once That Two Stickout Above All Others. One Is His Curious And Apparently Incurable Incompetence--his Congenital Inability To Do Any Difficult Thing Easily And Well, Whether It Be Isolating A Bacillus Or Writing A Sonata. The Other Is His Astounding Susceptibility To Fears And Alarms--in Short, His Hereditary Cowardice.... There Is No Record In History Of Any Anglo-saxon Nation Entering Upon Any Great War Without Allies.

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

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

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

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.

Since The Early Days, [the Church] Has Thrown Itself Violently Against Every Effort To Liberate The Body And Mind Of Man. It Has Been, At All Times And Everywhere, The Habitual And Incorrigible Defender Of Bad Governments, Bad Laws, Bad Social Theories, Bad Institutions. It Was, For Centuries, An Apologist For Slavery, As It Was An Apologist For The Divine Right Of Kings.

Man, Without A Saving Touch Of Woman In Him, Is Too Doltish, Too Naive And Romantic, Too Easily Deluded And Lulled To Sleep By His Imagination To Be Anything Above A Cavalryman, A Theologian Or A Corporation Director.

Better Than The Rest Of Us, They [the Jews] Sensed What Was Ahead For Their People.

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.

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.

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?

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

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Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

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

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.

Sunday Is A Day Given Over By Americans To Wishing That The Themselves Were Dead And In Heaven, And That Their Neighbors Were Dead And In Hell.

[thomas Henry] Huxley, I Believe, Was The Greatest Englishman Of The Nineteenth Century—perhaps The Greatest Englishman Of All Time. When One Thinks Of Him, One Thinks Inevitably Of Such Men As Goethe And Aristotle. For In Him There Was That Rich, Incomparable Blend Of Intelligence And Character, Of Colossal Knowledge And High Adventurousness, Of Instinctive Honesty And Indomitable Courage Which Appears In Mankind Only Once In A Blue Moon. There Have Been Far Greater Scientists, Even In England, But There Has Never Been A Scientist Who Was A Greater Man.

The Demagogue Is One Who Preaches Doctrines He Knows To Be Untrue To Men He Knows To Be Idiots.

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

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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 State Is Not Force Alone. It Depends Upon The Credulity Of Man Quite As Much As Upon His Docility. Its Aim Is Not Merely To Make Him Obey, But Also To Make Him Want To Obey.

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.

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

Simple Solutions

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

Evil: That Which One Believes Of Others. It Is A Sin To Believe Evil Of Others, But It Is Seldom A Mistake

A Man Of Active And Resilient Mind Outwears His Friendships Just As Certainly As He Outwears His Love Affairs, His Politics And His Epistemology.

Off Goes The Head Of The King, And Tyranny Gives Way To Freedom. The Change Seems Abysmal. Then, Bit By Bit, The Face Of Freedom Hardens, And By And By It Is The Old Face Of Tyranny. Then Another Cycle, And Another. But Under The Play Of All These Opposites There Is Something Fundamental And Permanent - The Basic Delusion That Men May Be Governed And Yet Be Free.

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

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.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

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.

No Reporter Of My Generation, Whatever His Genius, Ever Really Rated Spats And A Walking Stick Until He Had Covered Both A Lynching And A Revolution.

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

That It Should Still Be Necessary, At This Late Stage In The Senility Of The Human Race To Argue That Women Have A Fine And Fluent Intelligence Is Surely An Eloquent Proof Of The Defective Observation, Incurable Prejudice, And General Imbecility Of Their Lords And Masters.

To Argue That The Gaps In Knowledge Which 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.

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

Government Today Is Growing Too Strong To Be Safe. There Are No Longer Any Citizens In The World There Are Only Subjects. They Work Day In And Day Out For Their Masters They Are Bound To Die For Their Masters At Call. Out Of This Working And Dying They Tend To Get Less And Less.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Shave A Gorilla And It Would Be Almost Impossible, At Twenty Paces, To Distinguish Him From A Heavyweight Champion Of The World. Skin A Chimpanzee, And It Would Take An Autopsy To Prove He Was Not A Theologian.

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.

Conscience Is A Mother-in-law Whose Visit Never Ends.

The Lunatic Fringe Wags The Underdog.

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.

If There Was Ever A Dissenter From The National Optimismit Was Surely Edgar Allan Poe--without Question The Bravest And Mostoriginal, If Perhaps Also The Least Orderly And Judicious, Of All The Critics That We Have Produced.

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

Women In General Seem To Me To Be Appreciably More Intelligent Than Men. A Great Many Of Them Suffer In Silence From The Imbecilities Of Their Husbands.

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.

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

No Sane Man Objects To Palpable Lies About Him; What He Objects To Is Damaging Facts.

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.

Liberals Have Many Tails And Chase Them All.

One Seldom Discovers A True Believer That Is Worth Knowing.

Morality Is Doing What Is Right, No Matter What You Are Told. Religion Is Doing What You Are Told, No Matter What Is Right.

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

In The United States, Doing Good Has Come To Be, Like Patriotism, A Favorite Device Of Persons With Something To Sell.

I Know Of No Existing Nation That Deserves To Live, And I Know Of Very Few Individuals.

The Formula Of The Argument Is Simple And Familiar: To Dispose Of A Problem All That Is Necessary Is To Deny That It Exists.

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