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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Harsh, Useful Things

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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There Has Been No Organized Effort To Keep Government Down Since Jefferson's Day. Ever Since Then The American People Have Been Bolstering Up Its Powers And Giving It More And More Jurisdiction Over Their Affairs. They Pay For That Folly In Increased Taxes And Diminished Liberties.

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There Are Two Impossibilities In Life: "just One Drink" And "an Honest Politician."

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

The First Kiss Is Stolen By The Man; The Last Is Begged By The Woman.

For Me To Go Into Politics Would Be Like Sending A Virgin Into A House Of Ill-repute.

It Is Often Argued That Religion Is Valuable Because It Makes Men Good, But Even If This Were True It Would Not Be A Proof That Religion Is True. That Would Be An Extension Of Pragmatism Beyond Endurance. Santa Claus Makes Children Good In Precisely The Same Way, And Yet No One Would Argue Seriously That The Fact Proves His Existence. The Defense Of Religion Is Full Of Such Logical Imbecilities.

The So-called Philosophy Of India Is Even More Blowsy And Senseless Than The Metaphysics Of The West. It Is At War With Everything We Know Of The Workings Of The Human Mind, And With Every Sound Idea Formulated By Mankind. If It Prevailed In The Whole Modern World We'd Still Be In The Thirteenth Century; Nay, We'd Be Back Among The Egyptians Of The Pyramid Age. Its Only Coherent Contribution To Western Thought Has Been Theosophy-and Theosophy Is As Idiotic As Christian Science. It Has Absolutely Nothing To Offer A Civilized White Man.

A Critic Is A Man Who Writes About Things He Doesn't Like.

Kant Was Probably The Worst Writer Ever Heard Of On Earth Before Karl Marx. Some Of His Ideas Were Really Quite Simple, But He Always Managed To Make Them Seem Unintelligible. I Hope He Is In Hell.

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.

When I Hear Artists Or Authors Making Fun Of Businessmen, I Think Of A Regiment In Which The Band Makes Fun Of The Cooks.

The Objection Of The Scandalmonger Is Not That She Tells Of Racy Doings, But That She Pretends To Be Indignant About Them.

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.

He Sailed Through American History Like A Steel Ship Loaded With Monoliths Of Granite.

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.

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

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

The Only Good Bureaucrat Is One With A Pistol At His Head. Put It In His Hand And It's Good-bye To The Bill Of Rights.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Original Thought

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

Strike An Average Between What A Woman Thinks Of Her Husband A Month Before She Marries Him And What She Thinks Of Him A Year Afterward, And You Will Have The Truth About Him.

Wherever I Sit Is The Head Of The Table.

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

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

For The Habitual Truth-teller And Truth-seeker, Indeed, The Whole World Has Very Little Liking. He Is Always Unpopular.

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

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

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

...no Man Of Genuinely Superior Intelligence Has Ever Been An Actor. Even Supposing A Young Man Of Appreciable Mental Powers To Be Lured Upon The Stage, As Philosophers Are Occasionally Lured Into Bordellos, His Mind Would Be Inevitably And Almost Immediately Destroyed By The Gaudy Nonsense Issuing From His Mouth Every Night.

I Never Listen To Debates. They Are Dreadful Things Indeed. The Plain Truth Is That I Am Not A Fair Man, And Don't Want To Hear Both Sides. On All Known Subjects, Ranging From Aviation To Xylophone-playing, I Have Fixed And Invariable Ideas. They Have Not Changed Since I Was Four Or Five.

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

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

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

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.

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

There Are Men So Philosophical That They Can See Humor In Their Own Toothaches. But There Has Never Lived A Man So Philosophical That He Could See The Toothache In His Own Humor.

All Government Is, In Its Essence, Organized Exploitation, And In Virtually All Of Its Existing Forms It Is The Implacable Enemy Of Every Industrious And Well-disposed Man.

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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.

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[art Is] An Attempt To Escape From Life.

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

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

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

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Democracy Is A Pathetic Belief In The Collective Wisdom Of Individual Ignorance.

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

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

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

Never Let Your Inferiors Do You A Favor - It Will Be Extremely Costly.

A Home Is Not A Mere Transient Shelter: Its Essence Lies In The Personalities Of The People Who Live In It.

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

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

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

The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

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

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

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.

No Government Is Ever Really In Favor Of So-called Civil Rights. It Always Tries To Whittle Them Down. They Are Preserved Under All Governments, Insofar As They Survive At All, By Special Classes Of Fanatics, Often Highly Dubious.

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

Happiness Is The China Shop; Love Is The Bull.

Living With A Dog Is Easy- Like Living With An Idealist.

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

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

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.

Under Democracy One Party Always Devotes Its Chief Energies To Trying To Prove That The Other Party Is Unfit To Rule—and Both Commonly Succeed, And Are Right.

The Old Testament, As Everyone Who Has Looked Into It Is Aware, Drips With Blood; There Is, Indeed, No More Bloody Chronicle In All The Literature Of The World.

One Does Not Arise From Such A Book As Sister Carrie With A Smirk Of Satisfaction; One Leaves It Infinitely Touched.

The One Permanent Emotion Of The Inferior Man Is Fear - Fear Of The Unknown, The Complex, The Inexplicable. What He Wants Above Everything Else Is Safety.

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

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.

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Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want, And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.

Democracies Have

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

To Die For An Idea; It Is Unquestionably Noble. But How Much Nobler It Would Be If Men Died For Ideas That Were True!

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

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

Our Literature, Despite Several False Starts That Promised Much, Is Chiefly Remarkable, Now As Always, For Its Respectable Mediocrity.

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

The Way For Newspapers To Meet The Competition Of Radio And Television Is Simply To Get Out Better Papers.

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 To Often On Meeting Scientific Men, Even Those Of Genuine Distiction, One Finds That They Are Dull Fellows And Very Stupid. They Know One Thing To Excess; They Know Nothing Else. Pursuing Facts Too Doggedly And Unimaginatively, They Miss All The Charming Things That Are Not Facts. ... Too Much Learning, Like Too Little Learning, Is An Unpleasant And Dangerous Thing.

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

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

The Function Of A Newspaper In A Democracy Is To Stand As A Sort Of Chronic Opposition To The Reigning Quacks. The Minute It Begins To Out-whoop Them It Forfeits Its Character And Becomes Ridiculous.

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

We Must Be Prepared To Pay A Price For Freedom, For No Price That Is Ever Asked For It Is Half The Cost Of Doing Without It.

All The Great Villainies Of History, From The Murder Of Abel Onward, Have Been Perpetrated By Sober Men, Chiefly By Teetotalers.

Nothing Can Come Out Of An Artist That Is Not In The Man.

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

The Storm Center Of Lawlessness In Every American State Is The State Capitol. It Is There That The Worst Crimes Are Committed; It Is There That Lawbreaking Attains To The Estate And Dignity Of A Learned Profession; It Is There That Contempt For The Laws Is Engendered, Fostered, And Spread Broadcast.

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.

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

It Is Difficult To Imagine Anyone Having Any Real Hopes For The Human Race In The Face Of The Fact That The Great Majority Of Men Still Believe That The Universe Is Run By A Gaseous Vertebrate Of Astronomical Heft And Girth, Who Is Nevertheless Interested In The Minutest Details Of The Private Conduct Of Even The Meanest Man.

There Comes A Day Of Public Ceremonial, And A Chance To Make A Speech.... A Million Voters With Iqs Below 60 Have Their Ears Glued To The Radio. It Takes Four Days' Hard Work To Concoct A Speech Without A Sensible Word In It. Next A Dam Must Be Opened Somewhere. Four Dry Senators Get Drunk And Make A Painful Scene. The Presidential Automobile Runs Over A Dog. It Rains.

New York Is The Place Where All The Aspirations Of The Western World Meet To Form One Vast Master Aspiration, As Powerful As The Suction Of A Steam Dredge. It Is The Icing On The Pie Called Christian Civilization.

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.

Suicide Is A Belated Acquiescence In The Opinion Of One's Wife's Relatives.

As If Paralyzed By The National Fear Of Ideas, The Democratic Distrust Of Whatever Strikes Beneath The Prevailing Platitudes, It Evades All Resolute And Honest Dealing With What, After All, Must Be Every Healthy Literature's Elementary Materials.

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

The Americans Are The Illegitimate Children Of The English.

Illegitimate Child

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

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

Creator: A Comedian Whose Audience Is Afraid To Laugh.

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

The True Aim Of Medicine Is Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard And Rescue Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices. The Physician Does Not Preach Repentance; He Offers Absolution.

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

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.

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

For It Is Mutual Trust, Even More Than Mutual Interest That Holds Human Associations Together.

Mutual Interest

Well, I Tell You, If I Have Been Wrong In My Agnosticism, When I Die I'll Walk Up To God In A Manly Way And Say, Sir, I Made An Honest Mistake.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is No Idea So Stupid That You Can't Find A Professor Who Will Believe It.

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

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

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

To Large Numbers Of American Citizens Life In Certain Parts Of The Country Becomes Intolerably Hazardous. They May Be Seized On Any Pretext, However Flimsy, And Put To Death With Horrible Tortures. No Government Pretending To Be Civilized Can Go On Condoning Such Atrocities. Either It Must Make Every Possible Effort To Put Them Down Or It Must Suffer The Scorn And Contempt Of Christendom.

I Believe That Religion, Generally Speaking, Has Been A Curse To Mankind.

It Reminds Me Of A String Of Wet Sponges; It Reminds Me Of Tattered Washing On The Line; It Reminds Me Of Stale Bean Soup, Of College Yells, Of Dogs Barking Idiotically Through Endless Nights. It Is So Bad That A Sort Of Grandeur Creeps Into It. It Drags Itself Up Out Of The Dark Abyss Of Pish And Crawls Insanely Up The Topmost Pinnacle Of Posh. It Is Rumble And Bumble. It Is Flap And Doodle. It Is Balder And Dash.

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

Genius: The Ability To Prolong One's Childhood.

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.

The Older I Get The More I Admire And Crave Competence, Just Simple Competence, In Any Field From Adultery To Zoology.

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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.

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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.

Jealousy Is The Theory That Some Other Fellow Has Just As Little Taste.

The Only Way To Success In American Public Life Lies In Flattering And Kowtowing To The Mob

The Central Difficulty Lies In The Fact That All Of The Sciences Have Made Such Great Progress During The Last Century That They Have Got Quite Beyond The Reach Of Man

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

The Worshiper Is The Father Of The Gods.

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

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

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

The Instant I Reach Heaven, I'm Going To Speak To God Very Sharply.

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

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.

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

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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

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.

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

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

No One Hates His Job So Heartily As A Farmer.

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.

Why Writers Write I Do Not Know. As Well Ask Why A Hen Lays An Egg Or Why A Cow Stands Patiently While An Underprivileged Farmer Burglarizes Her.

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

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.

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

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

Love Is The Delusion That One Woman Differs From Another.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

At The End Of One Millennium And Nine Centuries Of Christianity, It Remains An Unshakable Assumption Of The Law In All Christian Countries And Of The Moral Judgement Of Christians Everywhere That If A Man And A Woman, Entering A Room Together, Close The Door Behind Them, The Man Will Come Out Sadder And The Woman Wiser.

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?

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

The First Rotarian Was The First Man To Call John The Baptist Jack.

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

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.

We Must Respect The Other Fellow's Religion, But Only In The Sense And To The Extent That We Respect His Theory That His Wife Is Beautiful And His Children Smart.

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.

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.

Every Man Sees In His Relatives, And Especially In His Cousins, A Series Of Grotesque Caricatures Of Himself.

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

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

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John D. MacDonald

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

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