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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Time Must Come

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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

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

The More I Think You Over, The More It Comes Home To Me What An Unmitigated Middle Victorian Ass You Are!

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.

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.

When Somebody Says It’s Not About The Money, It’s About The Money.

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

Experience Is A Poor Guide To Man, And Is Seldom Followed. What Really Teaches A Man Is Not Experience, But Observation.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

After All, The World Is Not Our Handiwork, And We Are Not Responsible For What Goes On In It, Save Within Very Narrow Limits.

The True Function Of Art Is To Criticize, Embellish And Edit Nature… The Artist Is A Sort Of Impassioned Proof-reader, Blue Penciling The Bad Spelling Of God.

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

To Believe That Russia Has Got Rid Of The Evils Of Capitalism Takes A Special Kind Of Mind. It Is The Same Kind Of Mind That Believes That A Holy Roller Has Got Rid Of Sin.

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

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

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.

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.

There Is Only One Honest Impulse At The Bottom Of Puritanism, And That Is The Impulse To Punish The Man With A Superior Capacity For Happiness.

In The Main, There Are Two Sorts Of Books: Those That No One Reads And Those That No One Ought To Read.

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.

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

The Most Curious Social Convention Of The Great Age In Which We Live Is The One To The Effect That Religious Opinions Should Be Respected. Its Evil Effects Must Be Plain Enough To Everyone. All It Accomplishes Is (a) To Throw A Veil Of Sanctity About Ideas That Violate Every Intellectual Decency, And (b) To Make Every Theologian A Sort Of Chartered Libertine. No Doubt It Is Mainly To Blame For The Appalling Slowness With Which Really Sound Notions Make Their Way In The World.

All Successful Newspapers Are Ceaselessly Querulous And Bellicose. They Never Defend Anyone Or Anything If They Can Help It; If The Job Is Forced On Them, They Tackle It By Denouncing Someone Or Something Else.

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

Life May Not Be Exactly Pleasant, But It Is At Least Not Dull. Heave Yourself Into Hell Today, And You May Miss, Tomorrow Or Next Day, Another Scopes Trial, Or Another War To End War, Or Perchance A Rich And Buxom Widow With All Her First Husband's Clothes. There Are Always More Hardings Hatching. I Advocate Hanging On As Long As Possible.

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

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.

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

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

I Never Smoked A Cigarette Until I Was Nine.

Democracy Turns Upon And Devours Itself. Universal Suffrage, In Theory The Palladium Of Our Liberties, Becomes The Assurance Of Our Slavery. And That Slavery Will Grow More And More Abject And Ignoble As The Differential Birth Rate, The Deliberate Encouragement Of Mendicancy And The Failure Of Popular Education Produce A Larger And Larger Mass Of Prehensile Half-wits, And So Make The Demagogues More And More Secure.

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.

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

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

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

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

All [zoos] Actually Offer To The Public In Return For The Taxes Spent Upon Them Is A Form Of Idle And Witless Amusement, Compared To Which A Visit To A Penitentiary, Or Even To A State Legislature In Session, Is Informing, Stimulating And Ennobling.

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

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

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

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

Nature Abhors A Moron.

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.

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

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

The Most Curious Social Convention Of The Great Age In Which We Live Is The One To The Effect That Religious Opinions Should Be Respected.

The Average Man Does Not Get Pleasure Out Of An Idea Because He Thinks It Is True; He Thinks It Is True Because He Gets Pleasure Out Of It.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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The Whole Aim Of Practical Politics Is To Keep The Populace Alarmed (and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety) By Menacing It With An Endless Series Of Hobgoblins, All Of Them Imaginary.

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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.

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

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

Communism, Like Any Other Revealed Religion, Is Largely Made Up Of Prophecies.

To Argue That The Gaps In Knowledge Which Confront The Seeker Must Be Filled, Not By Patient Inquiry, But By Intuition Or Revelation, Is Simply To Give Ignorance A Gratuitous And Preposterous Dignity.

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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.

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

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

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

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

The Average Woman Must Inevitably View Her Actual Husband With A Certain Disdain; He Is Anything But Her Ideal. In Consequence, She Cannot Help Feeling That Her Children Are Cruelly Handicapped By The Fact That He Is Their Father.

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?

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

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

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

Correct Spelling, Indeed, Is One Of The Arts That Are Far More Esteemed By Schoolma’ams Than By Practical Men, Neck-deep In The Heat And Agony Of The World.

No Man Is Worthy Of Unlimited Reliance-his Treason, At Best, Only Waits For Sufficient Temptation.

The Only Way To Reconcile Science And Religion Is To Set Up Something Which Is Not Science And Something That Is Not Religion.

Science And Religion

Citizenship In New York Is Now Worth No More Than Citizenship In Arkansas, For It Is Open To Any Applicant From The Marshes Of Bessarabia, And, Still Worse, To Any Applicant From Arkansas.

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

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.

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

All Human Progress, Even In Morals, Has Been The Work Of Men Who Have Doubted The Current Moral Values, Not Of Men Who Have Whooped Them Up And Tried To Enforce Them.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

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

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

It Is Impossible To Imagine The Universe Run By A Wise, Just And Omnipotent God, But It Is Quite Easy To Imagine It Run By A Board Of Gods.

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

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.

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.

Happiness Is Peace After Strife, The Overcoming Of Difficulties, The Feeling Of Security And Well-being. The Only Really Happy Folk Are Married Women And Single Men.

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

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

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty.

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

A Man Loses His Sense Of Direction After Four Drinks; A Woman Loses Hers After Four Kisses.

Funny Valentines Day

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

Men Become Civilized, Not In Proportion To Their Willingness To Believe, But In Their Readiness To Doubt.

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.

The Jews Fastened Their Religion Upon The Western World, Not Because It Was More Reasonable Than The Religions Of Their Contemporaries - As A Matter Of Fact, It Was Vastly Less Reasonable Than Many Of Them - But Because It Was Far More Poetical.

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.

The Gettysburg Adress Has Been Included, Of Late, In Several Anthologies Of Poetry. It Actually Meets The Major Requirement Of All Poetry: It Is A Mellifluous And Emotional Statement Of The Obviously Not True. The Men Who Fought For Self-determination At Gettysburg Were Not The Federals But The Confederates.

I Hate Sports The Way People Who Like Sports Hate Common Sense.

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

There Are Two Kinds Of Music; German Music And Bad Music.

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.

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

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

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

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. Nor Has Any One Ever Lost Public Office Thereby. The Mistake That Is Made Always Runs The Other Way. Because The Plain People Are Able To Speak And Understand, And Even, In Many Cases, To Read And Write, It Is Assumed That They Have Ideas In Their Heads, And An Appetite For More. This Assumption Is Folly. They Dislike Ideas, For Ideas Make Them Uncomfortable.

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

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality.

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.

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

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.

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

Dachshund: A Half-a-dog High And A Dog-and-a-half Long.

Happiness, Like Health, Is Probably Also Only A Passing Accident. For A Moment Or Two The Organism Is Irritated So Little That It Is Not Conscious Of It; For The Duration Of That Moment It Is Happy. Thus A Hog Is Always Happier Than A Man, And A Bacillus Is Happier Than A Hog

Every Reader Of The Dreiser Novels Must Cherish Astounding Specimens--of Awkward, Platitudinous Marginalia, Of Whole Scenes Spoiled By Bad Writing, Of Phrases As Brackish As So Many Lumps Of Sodium Hyposulphite.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

A Professional Politician Is A Professionally Dishonorable Man. In Order To Get Anywhere Near High Office He Has To Make So Many Compromises And Submit To So Many Humiliations That He Becomes Indistinguishable From A Streetwalker.

What Is Too Often Forgotten Is That Nature Obviously Intends The Botched To Die, And That Every Interference With That Benign Process Is Full Of Dangers.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Some Boys Go To College And Eventually Succeed In Getting Out. Others Go To College And Never Succeed In Getting Out. The Latter Are Called Professors.

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.

Giving Every Man A Vote Has No More Made Men Wise And Free Than Christianity Has Made Them Good.

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

What Makes Philosophy So Tedious Is Not The Profundity Of Philosophers, But Their Lack Of Art; They Are Like Physicians Who Soughtto Cure A Slight Hyperacidity By Prescribing A Carload Of Burned Oyster-shells.

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.

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

The Older I Grow The More I Distrust The Familiar Doctrine That Age Brings Wisdom.

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.

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

Adultery Is The Application Of Democracy To Love.

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.

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

The War On Privilege Will Never End. Its Next Grat Campaign Will Be Against The Special Privileges Of The Underprivileged.

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

God Must Love The Rich Or He Wouldn't Divide So Much Among So Few Of Them.

Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.

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

It Is Hard To Believe That A Man Is Telling The Truth When You Know That You Would Lie If You Were In His Place.

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

I Am One Of The Few Goyim Who Have Ever Actually Tackled The Talmud. I Suppose You Now Expect Me To Add That It Is A Profound And Noble Work, Worthy Of Hard Study By All Other Goyims. Unhappily, My Report Must Differ From This Expectation. It Seems To Me, Save For A Few Bright Spots, To Be Quite Indistinguishable From Rubbish.

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

I Hate All Sports As Rabidly As A Person Who Likes Sports Hates Common Sense.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

I Confess I Enjoy Democracy Immensely. It Is Incomparably Idiotic, And Hence Incomparably Amusing.

The Effect Of Every Sort Of New Deal Is To Increase And Prosper The Criminal Class. It Teaches Precisely What All Professional Criminals Believe, To Wit, That, It Is Neither Virtuous Nor Necessary To Suffer And To Do Without.

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.

The Typical American Of Today Has Lost All The Love Of Liberty, That His Forefathers Had, And All Their Disgust Of Emotion, And Pride In Self- Reliance. He Is Led No Longer By Davy Crocketts; He Is Led By Cheer Leaders, Press Agents, Word Mongers, Uplifters.

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

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

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

One May No More Live In The World Without Picking Up The Moral Prejudices Of The World Than One Will Be Able To Go To Hell Without Perspiring.

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.

Next To The Semi-colon, Quotation Marks Seem To Be The Chief Butts Of Reformatory Ardor.

Quotation Marks

On The One Side Was Bigotry, Ignorance, Hatred, Superstition, Every Sort Of Blackness That The Human Mind Is Capable Of. On The Other Side Was Sense.

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

Christian Endeavor Is Notoriously Hard On Female Pulchritude.

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.

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.

[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.

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

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

Have You Ever Watched A Crab On The Shore Crawling Backward In Search Of The Atlantic Ocean, And Missing? That's The Way The Mind Of Man Operates.

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

We Must Think Of Human Progress, Not As Of Something Going On In The Race In General, But As Something Going On In A Small Minority, Perpetually Beleaguered In A Few Walled Towns. Now And Then The Horde Of Barbarians Outside Breaks Through, And We Have An Armed Effort To Halt The Process. That Is, We Have A Reformation, A French Revolution, A War For Democracy, A Great Awakening. The Minority Is Decimated And Driven To Cover. But A Few Survive- And A Few Are Enough To Carry On.

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

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.

All The Political Seers And Sorcerers Seem To Be Agreed That The Coming Presidential Campaign Will Be Full Of Bitterness, And That Most Of It Will Be Caused By Religion. I Count Prohibition As A Part Of Religion, For It Has Surely Become So In The United States. The Prohibitionists, Seeing All Their Other Arguments Destroyed By The Logic Of Events, Have Fallen Back Upon The Mystical Doctrine That God Is Somehow On Their Side, And That Opposing Them Thus Takes On The Character Of Blasphemy.

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

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.

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Edward Everett Hale

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