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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Notion That Science

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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No One In This World, So Far As I Know - And I Have Searched The Records For Years, And Employed Agents To Help Me - Has Ever Lost Money By Underestimating The Intelligence Of The Great Masses Of The Plain People.

The Whole Drift Of Our Law Is Toward The Absolute Prohibition Of All Ideas That Diverge In The Slightest Form From The Accepted Platitudes, And Behind That Drift Of Law There Is A Far More Potent Force Of Growing Custom, And Under That Custom There Is A Natural Philosophy Which Erects Conformity Into The Noblest Of Virtues And The Free Functioning Of Personality Into A Capital Crime Against Society.

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

Capitalism Undoubtedly Has Certain Boils And Blotches Upon It, But Has It As Many As Government? Has It As Many As Marriage? Has It As Many As Religion? I Doubt It. It Is The Only Basic Institution Of Modern Man That Shows Any Genuine Health And Vigor.

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

The Notion That Anything Is Gained By Fixing A Language In A Groove Is Cherished Only By Pedants.

Capital Punishment Has Probably Been Responsible For A Good Deal Of Human Progress. The Overwhelming Majority Of Those Executed Were Of The Sort Whose Departures For Bliss Eternal Improved The Average Intelligence And Decency Of The Race.

The World Always Makes The Assumption That The Exposure Of An Error Is Identical With The Discovery Of Truth - That Error And Truth Are Simply Opposite. They Are Nothing Of The Sort. What The World Turns To, When It Has Been Cured Of One Error, Is Usually Simply Another Error, And Maybe One Worse Than The First One.

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.

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

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.

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

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out... Without Regard To The Prevailing Superstitions And Taboos. Almost Inevitably He Comes To The Conclusion That The Government He Lives Under Is Dishonest, Insane, Intolerable.

[t]here Is Only One Sound Argument For Democracy, And That Is The Argument That It Is A Crime For Any Man To Hold Himself Out As Better Than Other Men, And, Above All, A Most Heinous Offense For Him To Prove It.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

There Is, In Fact, No Reason To Believe That Any Given Natural Phenomenon, However Marvelous It May Seem Today, Will Remain Forever Inexplicable. Soon Or Late The Laws Governing The Production Of Life Itself Will Be Discovered In The Laboratory, And Man May Set Up Business As A Creator On His Own Account. The Thing, Indeed, Is Not Only Conceivable; It Is Even Highly Probable.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

Let No One Mistake It For Comedy, Farcical Though It May Be In All Its Details. It Serves Notice On The Country That Neanderthal Man Is Organizing In These Forlorn Backwaters Of The Land, Led By A Fanatic, Rid Of Sense And Devoid Of Conscience.

Is It Hot In The Rolling Mill? Are The Hours Long? Is $15 A Day Not Enough? Then Escape Is Easy. Simply Throw Up Your Job, Spit On Your Hands, And Write Another "rosenkavailer."

Some Time Ago A Publisher Told Me That There Are Four Kinds Of Books That Seldom, If Ever, Lose Money In The United States--first,murder Stories; Secondly, Novels In Which The Heroine Is Forcibly Overcome By The Hero; Thirdly, Volumes On Spiritualism, Occultism And Other Such Claptrap, And Fourthly, Books On Lincoln.

There Is Only One Justification For Having Sinned, And That Is To Be Glad Of It.

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

Life Without Sex Might Be Safer But It Would Be Unbearably Dull. It Is The Sex Instinct Which Makes Women Seem Beautiful, Which They Are Once In A Blue Moon, And Men Seem Wise And Brave, Which They Never Are At All. Throttle It, Denaturalize It, Take It Away, And Human Existence Would Be Reduced To The Prosaic, Laborious, Boresome, Imbecile Level Of Life In An Anthill.

Man's Objection To Love Is That It Dies Hard: Women's, That When It Is Dead It Stays Dead.

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

To The Man With An Ear For Verbal Delicacies- The Man Who Searches Painfully For The Perfect Word, And Puts The Way Of Saying A Thing Above The Thing Said - There Is In Writing The Constant Joy Of Sudden Discovery, Of Happy Accident.

The Effort To Reconcile Science And Religion Is Almost Always Made, Not By Theologians, But By Scientists Unable To Shake Off Altogether The Piety Absorbed With Their Mother's Milk.

The Believing Mind Is Externally Impervious To Evidence. The Most That Can Be Accomplished With It Is To Induce It To Substitute One Delusion For Another. It Rejects All Overt Evidence As Wicked.

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

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

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

If There Had Been Any Formidable Body Of Cannibals In The Country, Harry Truman Would Have Promised To Provide Them With Free Missionaries Fattened At The Taxpayer's Expense.

The Sort Of Man Who Likes To Spend His Time Watching A Cage Of Monkeys Chase One Another, Or A Lion Gnaw Its Tail, Or A Lizard Catch Flies, Is Precisely The Sort Of Man Whose Mental Weakness Should Be Combated At The Public Expense, Not Fostered.

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

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

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.

A Government At Bottom Is Nothing More Than A Group Of Men, And As A Practical Matter Most Of Them Are Inferior Men. ... Yet These Nonentities, By The Intellectual Laziness Of Men In General ... Are Generally Obeyed As A Matter Of Duty (and) Assumed To Have A Kind Of Wisdom That Is Superior To Ordinary Wisdom.

What Is The Function That A Clergyman Performs In The World? Answer: He Gets His Living By Assuring Idiots That He Can Save Them From An Imaginary Hell.

Love Is Like War: Easy To Begin But Very Hard To Stop.

The Main Thing That Every Political Campaign In The United States Demonstrates Is That The Politicians Of All Parties, Despite Their Superficial Enmities, Are Really Members Of One Great Brotherhood. Their Principal, And Indeed Their Sole, Object Is To Collar Public Office, With All The Privileges And Profits That Go Therewith. They Achieve This Collaring By Buying Votes With Other People's Money.

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

Hope: A Pathological Belief In The Occurrence Of The Impossible.

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?

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.

The Truth Is That The Scientific Value Of Polar Exploration Is Greatly Exaggerated. The Thing That Takes Men On Such Hazardous Trips Is Really Not Any Thirst For Knowledge, But Simply A Yearning For Adventure. ... A Polar Explorer Always Talks Grandly Of Sacrificing His Fingers And Toes To Science. It Is An Amiable Pretention, But There Is No Need To Take It Seriously.

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

A Man Who Is An Agnostic By Inheritance, So That He Doesn't Remember Any Time That He Wasn't, Has Almost No Hatred For The Religious.

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

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

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

The Critic, To Interpret His Artist, Even To Understand His Artist, Must Be Able To Get Into The Mind Of His Artist; He Must Feel And Comprehend The Vast Pressure Of The Creative Passion.

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.

I Go On Working For The Same Reason That A Hen Goes On Laying Eggs. There Is In Every Living Creature An Obscure But Powerful Impulse To Active Functioning. Life Demands To Be Lived. Inaction, Save As A Measure Of Recuperation Between Bursts Of Activity, Is Painful And Dangerous To The Healthy Organism- In Fact, It Is Almost Impossible. Only The Dying Can Be Really Idle.

A Gentlemen Is One Who Never Strikes A Woman Without Provocation.

Man Is The Yokel Par Excellence, The Booby Unmatchable, The King Dupe Of The Cosmos. He Is Chronically And Unescapably Deceived, Not Only By The Other Animals And By The Delusive Face Of Nature Herself--by His Incomparable Talent For Searching Out And Embracing What Is False, And For Overlooking And Denying What Is True.

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.

The Older I Grow The Less I Esteem Mere Ideas. In Politics, Particularly, They Are Transient And Unimportant. . . . There Are Only Men Who Have Character And Men Who Lack It.

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

Never Drink If You've Got Any Work To Do. Never.

A Newspaper Is A Device For Making The Ignorant More Ignorant And The Crazy Crazier.

I Go On Working For The Same Reason That A Hen Goes On Laying Eggs.

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

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

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?

Those Who Can't Teach - Administrate. Those Who Can't Administrate - Go Into Politics.

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.

The Fact Is That The Average Man's Love Of Liberty Is Nine-tenths Imaginary, Exactly Like His Love Of Sense, Justice And Truth... Liberty Is Not A Thing For The Great Masses Of Men. It Is The Exclusive Possession Of A Small And Disreputable Minority, Like Knowledge, Courage And Honor. It Takes A Special Sort Of Man To Understand And Enjoy Liberty - And He Is Usually An Outlaw In Democratic Societies.

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

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

God Is The Immemorial Refuge Of The Incompetent, The Helpless, And The Miserable. They Find Not Only Sanctuary In His Arms, But Also A Kind Of Superiority, Soothing To Their Macerated Egos; He Will Set Them Above Their Betters.

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

If What I May Believe - About Gall-stones, The Constitution, Castor Oil, Or God - Is Conditioned By Law, Then I Am Not A Free Man.

The Average Schoolmaster Is And Always Must Be Essentially An Ass, For How Can One Imagine An Intelligent Man Engaging In So Puerile An Avocation.

On Some Great And Glorious Day The Plain Folks Of The Land Will Reach Their Heart's Desire At Last, And The White House Will Be Adorned By A Downright Moron.

Justice Is What You Get When You Run Out Of Money.

A Wealthy Man Is One Who Earns $100 A Year More Than His Wife's Sister's Husband.

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

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

Who Ever Heard, Indeed, Of An Autobiography That Was Not (interesting)? I Can Recall None In All The Literature Of The World

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

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

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

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

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

The Only Really Happy Folk Are Married Women And Single Men.

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

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

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.

Hamlet Has Been Played By 5,000 Actors, No Wonder He Is Crazy.

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

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

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

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

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 Public ... Demands Certainties ... But There Are Not Certainties

Decision Making

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.

A Poet Over 30 Is Pathetic

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

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

The Scientist Who Yields Anything To Theology, However Slight, Is Yielding To Ignorance And False Pretenses, And As Certainly As If He Granted That A Horse-hair Put Into A Bottle Of Water Will Turn Into A Snake.

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

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

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.

There's No Underestimating The Intelligence Of The American Public.

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

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.

Why Do Men Go To Zoos?

The Cosmos Is A Gigantic Flywheel Making 10,000 Revolutions Per Minute. Man Is A Sick Fly Taking A Dizzy Ride On It.

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.

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.

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

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.

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

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

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

Democracies Have

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life Is A Constant Oscillation Between The Sharp Horns Of Dilemmas.

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.

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

Why Do Men Delight In Work? Fundamentally, I Suppose, Because There Is A Sense Of Relief And Pleasure In Getting Something Done - A Kind Of Satisfaction Not Unlike That Which A Hen Enjoys On Laying An Egg.

The Priest, Realistically Considered, Is The Most Immoral Of Men, For He Is Always Willing To Sacrifice Every Other Sort Of Good To The One Good Of His Arcanum - The Vague Body Of Mysteries That He Calls The Truth.

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

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.

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

There Is In Writing The Constant Joy Of Sudden Discovery, Of Happy Accident.

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

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

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

[the] Erroneous Assumption Is To The Effect That The Aim Of Public Education Is To Fill The Young Of The Species With Knowledge And Awaken Their Intelligence, And So Make Them Fit To Discharge The Duties Of Citizenship In An Enlightened And Independent Manner. Nothing Could Be Further From The Truth. The Aim Of Public Education Is Not To Spread Enlightenment At All; It Is Simply To Reduce As Many Individuals As Possible To The Same Safe Level, To Breed And Train A Standardised Citizenry, To Put Down Dissent And Originality.

The Great Difficulty About Keeping The Ten Commandments Is That No Man Can Keep Them And Be A Gentleman.

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

As For Me, My Literary Theory, Like My Politics, Is Based Chiefly Upon One Main Idea, To Wit, The Idea Of Freedom. I Am, In Brief, A Libertarian Of The Most Extreme Variety, And Know Of No Human Right That Is One-tenth As Valuable As The Simple Right To Utter What Seems (at The Moment) To Be The Truth

Literary Theory

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

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

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

Funny Inspirational

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.

Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

To Wage A War For A Purely Moral Reason Is As Absurd As To Ravish A Woman For A Purely Moral Reason

The Penalty For Laughing In A Courtroom Is Six Months In Jail; If It Were Not For This Penalty, The Jury Would Never Hear The Evidence.

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.

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

[texas Is] The Place Where There Are The Most Cows And The Least Milk And The Most Rivers And The Least Water In Them, And Where You Can Look The Farthest To See The Least.

The Extortions And Oppressions Of Government Will Go On So Long As Such Bare Fraudulence Deceives And Disarms The Victims; So Long As They Are Ready To Swallow The Immemorial Official Theory That Protesting Against The Stealings Of The Archbishop's Secretary's Nephew's Mistress' Illegitimate Son Is A Sin Against The Holy Ghost.

What Is Any Political Campaign Save A Concerted Effort To Turn Out A Set Of Politicians Who Are Admittedly Bad And Put In A Set Who Are Thought To Be Better. The Former Assumption, I Believe Is Always Sound; The Latter Is Just As Certainly False. For If Experience Teaches Us Anything At All It Teaches Us This: That A Good Politician, Under Democracy, Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

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

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

There Is, In Fact, Nothing About Religious Opinions That Entitles Them To Any More Respect Than Other Opinions Get. On The Contrary, They Tend To Be Noticeably Silly.

Others Opinions

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

It Is The Mission Of The Pedagogue, Not To Make His Pupils Think, But To Make Them Think Right, And The More Nearly His Own Mind Pulsates With The Great Ebbs And Flows Of Popular Delusion And Emotion, The More Admirably He Performs His Function. He May Be An Ass, But That Is Surely No Demerit In A Man Paid To Make Asses Of His Customers.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I Am Against Slavery Simply Because I Dislike Slaves.

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.

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.

Human Progress Is Furthered, Not By Conformity, But By Aberration.

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

I'm Thoroughly Convinced That Editors Don't Help Authors.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Self-respect - The Secure Feeling That No One, As Yet, Is Suspicious.

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

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.

When I Mount The Scaffold At Last These Will Be My Farewell Words To The Sheriff: Say What You Will Against Me When I Am Gone, But Don't Forget To Add, In Common Justice, That I Was Never Converted To Anything.

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

On One Issue, At Least, Men And Women Agree. They Both Distrust Women.

What We Need In This Country Is A General Improvement In Eating. We Have The Best Raw Materials In The World, Both Quantitatively And Qualitatively, But Most Of Them Are Ruined In The Process Of Preparing Them For The Table.

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