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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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The So-called Philosophy Of

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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

This Passion, So Unordered And Yet So Potent, Explains The Capacity For Teaching That One Frequently Observes In Scientific Men Of High Attainments In Their Specialties-for Example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted And Osler-men Who Knew Nothing Whatever About The So-called Science Of Pedagogy, And Would Have Derided Its Alleged Principles If They Had Heard Them Stated.

There Are Some People Who Read Too Much: The Bibliobibuli. I Know Some Who Are Constantly Drunk On Books, As Other Men Are Drunk On Whiskey Or Religion. They Wander Through This Most Diverting And Stimulating Of Worlds In A Haze, Seeing Nothing And Hearing Nothing.

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

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

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.

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.

No Article Of Faith Is Proof Against The Disintegrating Effects Of Increasing Information; One Might Almost Describe The Acquirement Of Knowledge As A Process Of Disillusion.

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.

Faith May Be Defined Briefly As An Illogical Belief In The Occurrence Of The Improbable.

Wherever I Sit Is The Head Of The Table.

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

If A Sense Of Duty Tortures A Man, It Also Enables Him To Achieve Prodigies.

Youth, Though It May Lack Knowledge, Is Certainly Not Devoid Of Intelligence; It Sees Through Shams With Sharp And Terrible Eyes.

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

The Law Is A Sort Of Hocus-pocus Science That Smiles In Your Face While It Picks Your Pocket.

Man, At His Best, Remains A Sort Of One-lunged Animal, Never Completely Rounded And Perfect, As A Cockroach, Say, Is Perfect.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

When I Reach The Shades At Last It Will No Doubt Astonish Satan To Discover, On Thumbing My Dossier, That I Was A Member Of The Y.m.c.a.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

[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.

Journalism Is To Politician As Dog Is To Lamp-post.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Mutual Interest

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

As For Lindbergh, Another Eminent Servant Of Science, All He Proved By His Gaudy Flight Across The Atlantic Was That God Takes Care Of Those Who Have Been So Fortunate As To Come Into The World Foolish. Expressing Skepticism That Adventure Does Not Necessarily Contribute To Scientific Knowledge.

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

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.

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

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.

Richard Strauss--old Home Week In Gomorrah

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

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

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

Faith May Be Defined Briefly As An Illogical Belief In The Occurrence Of The Improbable.... A Man Full Of Faith Is Simply One Who Has Lost (or Never Had) The Capacity For Clear And Realistic Thought. He Is Not A Mere Ass: He Is Actually Ill.

I Well Recall My Horror When I Heard For The First Time, Of A Journalist Who Had Laid In A Pair Of What Were Then Called Bicycle Pants And Taken To Golf; It Was As If I Had Encountered A Studhorse With His Hair Done Up In Frizzes, And Pink Bowknots Peeking Out Of Them. It Seemed, In Some Vague Way, Ignominious, And Even A Bit Indelicate.

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.

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

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.

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.

If The Average Man Is Made In God's Image, Then A Man Such As Beethoven Or Aristotle Is Plainly Superior To God, And So God May Be Jealous Of Him, And Eager To See His Superiority Perish With His Bodily Frame.

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

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.

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

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

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A Large Part Of Altruism, Even When It Is Perfectly Honest, Is Grounded Upon The Fact That It Is Uncomfortable To Have Unhappy People About One.

The Christian Always Swears A Bloody Oath That He Will Never Do It Again. The Civilized Man Simply Resolves To Be A Bit More Careful Next Time.

When Women Kiss It Always Reminds One Of Prize Fighters Shaking Hands.

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I Am, In Fact, The Complete Anti-messiah, And Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Detest Missionaries. My Writings, Such As They Are, Have Had Only One Purpose: To Attain For H. L. Mencken That Feeling Of Tension Relieved And Function Achieved Which A Cow Enjoys On Giving Milk.

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

After All Is Said And Done, A Hell Lot Of A Lot More Is Said Than Done.

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

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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

Liberty ... Was A Two-headed Boon. There Was First, The Liberty Of The People As A Whole To Determine The Forms Of Their Own Government, To Levy Their Own Taxes, And To Make Their Own Laws.... There Was Second, The Liberty Of The Individual Man To Live His Own Life, Within The Limits Of Decency And Decorum, As He Pleased -- Freedom From The Despotism Of The Majority.

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

The Only Guarantee Of The Bill Of Rights Which Continues To Have Any Force And Effect Is The One Prohibiting Quartering Troops On Citizens In Time Of Peace. All The Rest Have Been Disposed Of By Judicial Interpretation And Legislative Whittling.

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

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

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Editors Are Committed To Nothing Save This: To Keep Common Sense As Fast As They Can, To Belabor Sham As Agreeably As Possible, To Give Civilized Entertainment.

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.

Puccini - Silver Macaroni, Exquisitely Tangled.

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

The Fundamental Trouble With Marriage Is That It Shakes A Man's Confidence In Himself, And So Greatly Diminishes His General Competence And Effectiveness. His Habit Of Mind Becomes That Of A Commander Who Has Lost A Decisive And Calamitous Battle. He Quite Trusts Himself Thereafter.

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

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

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

Decision Making

Love Is The Delusion That One Woman Differs From Another.

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

For It Is Mutual Trust, Even More Than Mutual Interest That Holds Human Associations Together. Our Friends Seldom Profit Us But They Make Us Feel Safe. Marriage Is A Scheme To Accomplish Exactly That Same End.

Mutual Interest

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

No One Ever Heard Of The Truth Being Enforced By Law. When The Secular Is Called In To Sustain An Idea, Whether New Or Old, It Is Always A Bad Idea, And Not Infrequently It Is Downright Idiotic.

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

They Have Taken The Care And Upbringing Of Children Out Of The Hands Of Parents, Where It Belongs, And Thrown It Upon A Gang Of Irresponsible And Unintelligent Quacks.

The Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant, In This Field As In All Others. His Culture Is Based On 'i Am Not Too Sure'.

A Puritan Is Someone Who Is Desperately Afraid That, Somewhere, Someone Might Be Having A Good Time.

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

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

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

I Roll Out Of My Couch Every Morning With The More Agreeable Expectations.

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.

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.

Probably The Worst Thing That Has Happened In America In My Time Is The Decay Of Confidence In The Courts. No One Can Be Sure Any More That In A Given Case They Will Uphold The Plainest Mandate Of The Constitution. On The Contrary, Everyone Begins To Be More Or Less Convinced In Advance That They Won't. Judges Are Chosen Not Because They Know The Constitution And Are In Favor Of It, But Precisely Because They Appear To Be Against It.

It Is A Peculiarity Of The American Mind That It Regards Any Excursion Into The Truth As An Adventure Into Cynicism.

How Little It Takes To Make Life Unbearable: A Pebble In The Shoe, A Cockroach In The Spaghetti, A Woman's Laugh.

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.

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

Here Is One Of The Fundamental Defects Of American Fiction--perhaps The One Character That Sets It Off Sharply From All Other Known Kinds Of Contemporary Fiction. It Habitually Exhibits, Not A Man Of Delicate Organization In Revolt Against The Inexplicable Tragedy Of Existence, But A Man Of Low Sensibilities And Elemental Desires Yielding Himself Gladly To His Environment, And So Achieving What, Under A Third-rate Civilization, Passes For Success. To Get On: This Is The Aim. To Weigh And Reflect, To Doubt And Rebel: This Is The Thing To Be Avoided.

Contemporary Fiction

The Only Really Respectable Protestants Are The Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, They Are Also Palpable Idiots.

If, After I Depart This Vale, You Ever Remember Me And Have Thought To Please My Ghost, Forgive Some Sinner And Wink Your Eye At Some Homely Girl.

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

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

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

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

[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 Man's Women Folk, Whatever Their Outward Show Of Respect For His Merit And Authority, Always Regard Him Secretly As An Ass, And With Something Akin To Pity. His Most Gaudy Sayings And Doings Seldom Deceive Them; They See The Actual Man Within, And Know Him For A Shallow And Pathetic Fellow. In This Fact, Perhaps, Lies One Of The Best Proofs Of Feminine Intelligence, Or, As The Common Phrase Makes It, Feminine Intuition.

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

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.

The Great Secret Of Happiness In Love Is To Be Glad That The Other Fellow Married Her.

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?

What I Admire Most In Any Man Is A Serene Spirit, A Steady Freedom From Moral Indignation, And All-embracing Tolerance--in Brief,what Is Commonly Called Sportsmanship.

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

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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

Truth - Something Somehow Discreditable To Someone.

Here Is Tragedy - And Here Is America. For The Curse Of The Country, As Well Of All Democracies, Is Precisely The Fact That It Treats Its Best Men As Enemies. The Aim Of Our Society, If It May Be Said To Have An Aim, Is To Iron Them Out. The Ideal American, In The Public Sense, Is A Respectable Vacuum.

The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal. Some Of Their Most Esteemed Inventions Have No Other Apparent Purpose - For Example, The Dinner Party Of More Than Two, The Epic Poem, And The Science Of Metaphysics.

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.

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

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.

The Theory Behind Representative Government Is That Superior Men-or At Least Men Not Inferior To The Average In Ability And Integrity-are Chosen To Manage The Public Business, And That They Carry On This Work With Reasonable Intelligence And Honest. There Is Little Support For That Theory In Known Facts.

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.

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

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 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.

The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Even Ordinarily Respectable.

When I Hear A Man Applauded By The Mob I Always Feel A Pang Of Pity For Him. All He Has To Do To Be Hissed Is To Live Long Enough.

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.

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.

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.

The Book Of Revelation Has All The Authority, In These Theological Uplands, Of Military Orders In Time Of War. The People Turn To It For Light Upon All Their Problems, Spiritual And Secular.

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

In The Duel Of Sex Woman Fights From A Dreadnought And Man From An Open Raft.

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

I Believe That Religion, Generally Speaking, Has Been A Curse To Mankind - That Its Modest And Greatly Overestimated Services On The Ethical Side Have Been More Than Overcome By The Damage It Has Done To Clear And Honest Thinking.

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

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

Conscience Is The Inner Voice That Warns Us That Someone Might Be Looking.

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

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.

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.

Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.

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.

Osteopath--one Who Argues That All Human Ills Are Caused By The Pressure Of Hard Bone Upon Soft Tissue. The Proof Of His Theory Isto Be Found In The Heads Of Those Who Believe It.

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.

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

Taxation, For Example, Is Eternally Lively; It Concerns Nine-tenths Of Us More Directly Than Either Smallpox Or Golf, And Has Just As Much Drama In It; Moreover, It Has Been Mellowed And Made Gay By As Many Gaudy, Preposterous Theories

Remorse - Regret That One Waited So Long To Do It.

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

Liberty Is Not For These Slaves; I Do Not Advocate Inflicting It Against Their Conscience. On The Contrary, I Am Strongly In Favor Of Letting Them Crawl And Grovel All They Please Before Whatever Fraud Or Combination Of Frauds They Choose To Venerate...our Whole Practical Government Is Grounded In Mob Psychology And The Boobus Americanus Will Follow Any Command That Promises To Make Him Safer.

Voting Is Simply A Way Of Determining Which Side Is The Stronger Without Putting It To The Test Of Fighting.

It Is Common To Assume That Human Progress Affects Everyone - That Even The Dullest Man, In These Bright Days, Knows More Than Any Man Of, Say, The Eighteenth Century, And Is Far More Civilized. This Assumption Is Quite Erroneous. . . . The Great Masses Of Men, Even In This Inspired Republic, Are Precisely Where The Mob Was At The Dawn Of History. They Are Ignorant, They Are Dishonest, They Are Cowardly, They Are Ignoble. They Know Little If Anything That Is Worth Knowing, And There Is Not The Slightest Sign Of A Natural Desire Among Them To Increase Their Knowledge.

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.

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

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.

War Will Never Cease Until Babies Begin To Come Into The World With Larger Cerebrums And Smaller Adrenal Glands.

Whenever "a" Attempts By Law To Impose His Moral Standards Upon "b," "a" Is Most Likely A Scoundrel.

Every Failure Teaches A Man Something, To Wit, That He Will Probably Fail Again.

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

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

I Give You Chicago. It Is Not London And Harvard. It Is Not Paris And Buttermilk. It Is American In Every Chitling And Sparerib. It Is Alive From Snout To Tail.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man. One May Believe In An Idea Absolutely, But Not In A Man. In The Highest Confidence There Is Always A Flavor Of Doubt--a Feeling, Half Instinctive And Half Logical, That, After All, The Scoundrel May Have Something Up His Sleeve.

All That The Y.m.c.a.'s Horse And Rings Really Accomplished Was To Fill Me With An Ineradicable Distaste, Not Only For Christian Endeavor In All Its Forms, But Also For Every Variety Of Calisthenics, So That I Still Begrudge The Trifling Exertion Needed To Climb In And Out Of A Bathtub, And Hate All Sports As Rabidly As A Person Who Likes Sports Hates Common Sense. If I Had My Way No Man Guilty Of Golf Would Be Eligible To Any Office Of Trust Or Profit Under The United States, And All Female Athletes Would Be Shipped To The White-slave Corrals Of The Argentine.

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.

The American People, I Am Convinced, Really Detest Free Speech. At The Slightest Alarm They Are Ready And Eager To Put It Down.

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

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

No Matter How Long He Lives, No Man Ever Becomes As Wise As The Average Woman Of Forty-eight.

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

Genius: The Ability To Prolong One's Childhood.

A Poet Over 30 Is Pathetic

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.

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

In My Day A Reporter Who Took An Assignment Was Wholly On His Own Until He Got Back To The Office, And Even Then He Was Little Molested Until His Copy Was Turned In At The Desk; Today He Tends To Become Only A Homunculus At The End Of A Telephone Wire, And The Reduction Of His Observations To Prose Is Commonly Farmed Out To Literary Castrati Who Never Leave The Office, And Hence Never Feel The Wind Of The World In Their Faces Or See Anything With Their Own Eyes.

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.

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 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 Book Of Genesis, A Farrago Of Nonsense So Wholly Absurd That Even Sunday-school Scholars Have To Be Threatened With Hell To Make Them Accept It.

The Best Teacher Is Not The One Who Knows Most But The One Who Is Most Capable Of Reducing Knowledge To That Simple Compound Of The Obvious And Wonderful.

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.

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

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 Essence Of Science Is That It Is Always Willing To Abandon A Given Idea For A Better One; The Essence Of Theology Is That It Holds Its Truths To Be Eternal And Immutable.

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

In This World Of Sin And Sorrow There Is Always Something To Be Thankful For; As For Me, I Rejoice That I Am Not A Republican.

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

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

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