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The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Smallest Atom Of

H. L. Mencken

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The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

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The Public, With Its Mob Yearning To Be Instructed, Edified And Pulled By The Nose, Demands Certainties; It Must Be Told Definitely And A Bit Raucously That This Is True And That Is False. But There Are No Certainties.

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

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

Public Opinion, In Its Raw State, Gushes Out In The Immemorial Form Of The Mob's Fear. It Is Piped Into Central Factories, And There It Is Flavoured And Colored And Put Into Cans.

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

A Good Politician Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

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

He Slept More Than Any Other President, Whether By Day Or By Night. Nero Fiddled, But Coolidge Only Snored.

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.

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

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

To Be In Love Is Merely To Be In A State Of Perceptual Anesthesia - To Mistake An Ordinary Young Woman For A Goddess.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Natural Tendency Of Every Government Is To Grow Steadily Worse-that Is, To Grow More Satisfactory To Those Who Constitute It And Less Satisfactory To Those Who Support It.

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

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.

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

The Time Must Come Inevitably When Mankind Shall Surmount The Imbecility Of Religion, As It Has Surmounted The Imbecility Of Religion's Ally, Magic. It Is Impossible To Imagine This World Being Really Civilized So Long As So Much Nonsense Survives. In Even Its Highest Forms Religion Embraces Concepts That Run Counter To All Common Sense. It Can Be Defended Only By Making Assumptions And Adopting Rules Of Logic That Are Never Heard Of In Any Other Field Of Human Thinking.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

Philadelphia Is The Most Pecksniffian Of American Cities, And Thus Probably Leads The World.

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.

What I Got In Sunday School ... Was Simply A Firm Conviction That The Christian Faith Was Full Of Palpable Absurdities, And The Christian God Preposterous.... The Act Of Worship, As Carried On By Christians, Seems To Me To Be Debasing Rather Than Ennobling. It Involves Groveling Before A Being Who, If He Really Exists, Deserves To Be Denounced Instead Of Respected.

When A Candidate For Public Office Faces The Voters He Does Not Face Men Of Sense; He Faces A Mob Of Men Whose Chief Distinguishing Mark Is The Fact That They Are Quite Incapable Of Weighing Ideas, Or Even Of Comprehending Any Save The Most Elemental - Men Whose Whole Thinking Is Done In Terms Of Emotion, And Whose Dominant Emotion Is Dread Of What They Cannot Understand. So Confronted, The Candidate Must Either Bark With The Pack Or Be Lost... All The Odds Are On The Man Who Is, Intrinsically, The Most Devious And Mediocre.

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.

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.

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

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

Mutual Interest

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

If X Is The Population Of The United States And Y Is The Degree Of Imbecility Of The Average American, Then Democracy Is The Theory That X Times Y Is Less Than Y

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

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.

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.

It [the State] Has Taken On A Vast Mass Of New Duties And Responsibilities; It Has Spread Out Its Powers Until They Penetrate To Every Act Of The Citizen, However Secret; It Has Begun To Throw Around Its Operations The High Dignity And Impeccability Of A State Religion; Its Agents Become A Separate And Superior Caste, With Authority To Bind And Loose, And Their Thumbs In Every Pot. But It Still Remains, As It Was In The Beginning, The Common Enemy Of All Well-disposed, Industrious And Decent Men.

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

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.

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.

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

Man Is Never Honestly The Fatalist, Nor Even The Stoic. He Fights His Fate, Often Desperately. He Is Forever Entering Bold Exceptions To The Rulings Of The Bench Of Gods. This Fighting, No Doubt, Makes For Human Progress, For It Favors The Strong And The Brave. It Also Makes For Beauty, For Lesser Men Try To Escape From A Hopeless And Intolerable World By Creating A More Lovely One Of Their Own.

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

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

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.

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

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

A Poet Over 30 Is Pathetic

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

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

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

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

All Government, In Its Essence, Is A Conspiracy Against The Superior Man: Its One Permanent Object Is To Oppress Him And Cripple Him.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When We Appropriate Money From The Public Funds To Pay For Vaccinating A Horde Of Negroes, We Do Not Do It Because We Have Any Sympathy For Them Or Because We Crave Their Blessings, But Simply Because We Don't Want Them To Be Falling Ill Of Smallpox

Men Always Try To Make Virtues Of Their Weaknesses. Fear Of Death And Fear Of Life Both Become Piety.

Immorality: The Morality Of Those Who Are Having A Better Time.

Save Among Politicians It Is No Longer Necessary For Any Educated American To Profess Belief In Thirteenth Century Ideas

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

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

The Great Masses Of Men, Though Theoretically Free, Are Seen To Submit Supinely To Oppression And Exploitation Of A Hundred Abhorrent Sorts. Have They No Means Of Resistance? Obviously They Have. The Worst Tyrant, Even Under Democratic Plutocracy, Has But One Throat To Slit. The Moment The Majority Decided To Overthrow Him He Would Be Overthrown. But The Majority Lacks The Resolution; It Cannot Imagine Taking The Risks.

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.

What Ails The Truth Is That It Is Mainly Uncomfortable, And Often Dull. The Human Mind Seeks Something More Amusing, And More Caressing.

There Are No Institutions In America: There Are Only Fashions.

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.

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

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

A Dull, Dark, Depressing Day In Winter: The Whole World Looks Like A Methodist Church At Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.

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

Of Learned Men, The Clergy Show The Lowest Development Of Professional Ethics. Any Pastor Is Free To Cadge Customers From The Divines Of Rival Sects, And To Denounce The Divines Themselves As Theological Quacks.

A Man Always Blames The Woman Who Fools Him. In The Same Way He Blames The Door He Walks Into In The Dark.

Funny Inspirational

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

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

There Is Always A Sheet Of Paper. There Is Always A Pen. There Is Always A Way Out.

Free Speech Is Too Dangerous To A Democracy To Be Permitted

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

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

Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

In Any Combat Between A Rogue And A Fool The Sympathy Of Mankind Is Always With The Rogue.

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

Man Is A Beautiful Machine That Works Very Badly.

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

The Fact Is That Liberty, In Any True Sense, Is A Concept That Lies Quite Beyond The Reach Of The Inferior Man's Mind. And No Wonder, For Genuine Liberty Demands Of Its Votaries A Quality He Lacks Completely, And That Is Courage. The Man Who Loves It Must Be Willing To Fight For It; Blood, Said Jefferson, Is Its Natural Manure. Liberty Means Self-reliance, It Means Resolution, It Means The Capacity For Doing Without . . . The Average Man Doesn't Want To Be Free. He Wants To Be Safe.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Curse Of Man, And The Cause Of Nearly All His Woe, Is His Stupendous Capacity For Believing The Incredible.

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

Not By Accident, You May Be Sure, Do The Christian Scriptures Make The Father Of Knowledge A Serpent - Slimy, Sneaking And Abominable.

He Who Eats Alone Chokes Alone.

It Is The Invariable Habit Of Bureaucracies, At All Times And Everywhere, To Assume...that Every Citizen Is A Criminal. Their One Apparent Purpose, Pursued With A Relentless And Furious Diligence, Is To Convert The Assumption Into A Fact. They Hunt Endlessly For Proofs, And, When Proofs Are Lacking, For Mere Suspicions. The Moment They Become Aware Of A Definite Citizen, John Doe, Seeking What Is His Right Under The Law, They Begin Searching Feverishly For An Excuse For Withholding It From Him.

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.

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

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.

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

The New Deal Began, Like The Salvation Army, By Promising To Save Humanity. It Ended, Again Like The Salvation Army, By Running Flop-houses And Disturbing The Peace.

Every Election Is A Sort Of Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

I Know Of No American Who Starts From A Higher Level Of Aspiration Than The Journalist. . . . He Plans To Be Both An Artist And A Moralist -- A Master Of Lovely Words And Merchant Of Sound Ideas. He Ends, Commonly, As The Most Depressing Jackass Of His Community -- That Is, If His Career Goes On To What Is Called A Success.

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.

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.

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

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

Whenever A Annoys Or Injures B On The Pretense Of Saving Or Improving X, A Is A Scoundrel.

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

The Psychologists And The Metaphysicians Wrangle Endlessly Over The Nature Of The Thinking Process In Man, But No Matter How Violently They Differ Otherwise They All Agree That It Has Little To Do With Logic And Is Not Much Conditioned By Overt Facts.

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

The Argument That Capital Punishment Degrades The State Is Moonshine, For If That Were True Then It Would Degrade The State To Send Men To War... The State, In Truth, Is Degraded In Its Very Nature: A Few Butcheries Cannot Do It Any Further Damage.

Friendship Is A Common Belief In The Same Fallacies, Mountebanks And Hobgoblins.

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 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.

The Worshiper Is The Father Of The Gods.

Whenever You Hear A Man Speak Of His Love For His Country, It Is A Sign That He Expects To Be Paid For It.

No Married Man Is Genuinely Happy If He Has To Drink Worse Whisky Than He Used To Drink When He Was Single.

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

What The Meaning Of Human Life May Be I Don't Know: I Incline To Suspect That It Has None.

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

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.

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.

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

An Author, Like Any Other So-called Artist, Is A Man In Whom The Normal Vanity Of All Men Is So Vastly Exaggerated That He Finds It A Sheer Impossibility To Hold It In. His Over-powering Impulse Is To Gyrate Before His Fellow Men, Flapping His Wings And Emitting Defiant Yells. This Being Forbidden By The Police Of All Civilized Nations, He Takes It Out By Putting His Yells On Paper. Such Is The Thing Called Self-expression.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It Is The Theory Of All Modern Civilized Governments That They Protect And Foster The Liberty Of The Citizen; It Is The Practice Of All Of Them To Limit Its Exercise, And Sometimes Very Narrowly.

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.

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

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

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.

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 Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

Nine Times Out Of Ten, In The Arts As In Life, There Is Actually No Truth To Be Discovered; There Is Only Error To Be Exposed.

When A New Source Of Taxation Is Found It Never Means, In Practice, That The Old Source Is Abandoned. It Merely Means That The Politicians Have Two Ways Of Milking The Taxpayer Where They Had One Before.

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.

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

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

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

Women Have A Hard Time Of It In This World. They Are Oppressed By Man-made Laws, Man-made Social Customs, Masculine Egoism, The Delusion Of Masculine Superiority. Their One Comfort Is The Assurance That, Even Though It May Be Impossible To Prevail Against Man, It Is Always Possible To Enslave And Torture A Man.

Puritanism. The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.

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.

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

If The American People Really Tire Of Democracy And Want To Make A Trial Of Fascism, I Shall Be The Last Person To Object. But If That Is Their Mood, Then They Had Better Proceed Toward Their Aim By Changing The Constitution And Not By Forgetting It.

So Few Men Are Really Worth Knowing, That It Seems A Shameful Waste To Let An Anthropoid Prejudice Stand In The Way Of Free Association With One Who Is.

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

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

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.

Government Is Actually The Worst Failure Of Civilized Man. There Has Never Been A Really Good One, And Even Those That Are Most Tolerable Are Arbitrary, Cruel, Grasping And Unintelligent.

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

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.

Morality Is The Theory That Every Human Act Must Be Either Right Or Wrong, And That 99 % Of Them Are Wrong.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

A Cynic Is A Man Who, When He Smells Flowers, Looks Around For A Coffin Or When He Sees Silver He Looks For The Cloud It Lines. A Wise Happy Person Does The Exact Opposite.

The Government Consists Of A Gang Of Men Exactly Like You And Me. They Have, Taking One With Another, No Special Talent For The Business Of Government; They Have Only A Talent For Getting And Holding Office. Their Principal Device To That End Is To Search Out Groups Who Pant And Pine For Something They Can't Get And To Promise To Give It To Them. Nine Times Out Of Ten That Promise Is Worth Nothing. The Tenth Time Is Made Good By Looting A To Satisfy B. In Other Words, Government Is A Broker In Pillage, And Every Election Is Sort Of An Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

Puccini - Silver Macaroni, Exquisitely Tangled.

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?

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

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

The Smallest Atom Of Truth Represents Some Man's Bitter Toil And Agony; For Every Ponderable Chunk Of It There Is A Brave Truth-seeker's Grave Upon Some Lonely Ash-dump And A Soul Roasting In Hell.

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

[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.

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

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.

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

The Most Valuable Of All Human Possessions, Next To A Superior And Disdainful Air, Is The Reputation Of Being Well-to-do.

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.

No Matter How Happily A Woman May Be Married, It Always Pleases Her To Discover That There Is A Nice Man Who Wishes That She Were Not.

But I Wonder Where We Will Land If Trial Judges Begin Deciding That The Fact That A Man Has Committed An Atrocious Crime Is Proof Sufficient That He Is Not Responsible For His Acts.

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, And That Trying To Improve It Is Largely A Waste Of Time.

Change Is Not Progress.

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.

Looking For An Honest Politician Is Like Looking For An Ethical Burglar.

What Reason Is There For Believing That A High Death Rate, In Itself, Is Undesirable? To My Knowledge None Whatever. The Plain Fact Is That, If It Be Suitably Selective, It Is Extremely Salubrious. Suppose It Could Be So Arranged That It Ran To 100% A Year Among Politicians, Executive Secretaries, Drive Chairmen, And The Homicidally Insane? What Rational Man Would Object?

[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.

A Sound American Is Simply One Who Has Put Out Of His Mind All Doubts And Questionings, And Who Accepts Instantly, And As Incontrovertible Gospel, The Whole Body Of Official Doctrine Of His Day, Whatever It May Be And No Matter How Often It May Change. The Instant He Challenges It, No Matter How Timorously And Academically, He Ceases By That Much To Be A Loyal And Creditable Citizen Of The Republic.

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

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

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.

A Church Is A Place In Which Gentlemen Who Have Never Been To Heaven Brag About It To Persons Who Will Never Get There.

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

The Taboos That I Have Mentioned Are Extraordinarily Harsh And Numerous. They Stand Around Nearly Every Subject That Is Genuinely Important To Man: They Hedge In Free Opinion And Experimentation On All Sides. Consider, For Example, The Matter Of Religion. It Is Debated Freely And Furiously In Almost Every Country In The World Save The United States, But Here The Critic Is Silenced. The Result Is That All Religions Are Equally Safeguarded Against Criticism, And That All Of Them Lose Vitality. We Protect The Status Quo, And So Make Steady War Upon Revision And Improvement.

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