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The Truth Is . . . That The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Ever Ordinarily Respectable. No Virtuous Man - That Is, Virtuous In The Ymca Sense - Has Ever Painted A Picture Worth Looking At, Or Written A Symphony Worth Hearing, Or A Book Worth Reading, And It Is Highly Improbable That The Thing Has Ever Been Done By A Virtuous Woman.

-H. L. Mencken

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The Truth Is .

H. L. Mencken

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The Truth Is . . . That The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Ever Ordinarily Respectable. No Virtuous Man - That Is, Virtuous In The Ymca Sense - Has Ever Painted A Picture Worth Looking At, Or Written A Symphony Worth Hearing, Or A Book Worth Reading, And It Is Highly Improbable That The Thing Has Ever Been Done By A Virtuous Woman.

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

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty. If Ever A Man Is To Achieve Anything Like Dignity, It Can Happen Only If Superior Men Are Given Absolute Freedom To Think What They Want To Think And Say What They Want To Say. I Am Against Any Man And Any Organization Which Seeks To Limit Or Deny That Freedom ... The Superior Man Can Be Sure Of Freedom Only If It Is Given To All Men.

To The Extent That I Am Genuinely Educated, I Am Suspicious Of All The Things That The Average Citizen Believes And The Average Pedagogue Teaches.

Syllogisms а La Mode - If You Are Against Labor Racketeers, Then You Are Against The Working Man. If You Are Against Demagogues, Then You Are Against Democracy. If You Are Against Christianity, Then You Are Against God. If You Are Against Trying A Can Of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, Then You Are In Favor Of Letting Uncle Julius Die.

Religion Is A Conceited Effort To Deny The Most Obvious Realities.

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

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

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.

Every Step In Human Progress, From The First Feeble Stirrings In The Abyss Of Time, Has Been Opposed By The Great Majority Of Men. Every Valuable Thing That Has Been Added To The Store Of Man's Possessions Has Been Derided By Them When It Was New, And Destroyed By Them When They Had The Power. They Have Fought Every New Truth Ever Heard Of, And They Have Killed Every Truth-seeker Who Got Into Their Hands.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Man Is A Natural Polygamist: He Always Has One Woman Leading Him By The Nose, And Another Hanging On To His Coattails.

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.

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

The Plain Fact Is That Education Is Itself A Form Of Propaganda - A Deliberate Scheme To Outfit The Pupil, Not With The Capacity To Weigh Ideas, But With A Simple Appetite For Gulping Ideas Ready-made. The Aim Is To Make 'good' Citizens, Which Is To Say, Docile And Uninquisitive Citizens.

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

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.

It Takes No More Actual Sagacity To Carry On The Everyday Hawking And Haggling Of The World, Or To Ladle Out Its Normal Doses Of Bad Medicine And Worse Law, Than It Takes To Operate A Taxicab Or Fry A Pan Of Fish.

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.

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

Nine Out Of Ten Americans Are Actually Monarchists At Bottom. The Fact Is Proved By Their High Suseptibility To Political Claims By President's Sons And Other Relatives, Usually Nonentities.

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

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.

There Is No Possibility Whatsoever Of Reconciling Science And Theology, At Least In Christendom. Either Jesus Arose From The Dead Or He Didn't. If He Did, Then Christianity Becomes Plausible; If He Did Not, Then It Is Sheer Nonsense. I Defy Any Genuine Scientists To Say That He Believes In The Resurrection, Or Indeed In Any Other Cardinal Dogma Of The Christian System.

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.

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

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

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.

A Man Full Of Faith Is Simply One Who Has Lost The Capacity For Clear And Realistic Thought.

I Do Not Believe In Democracy, But I Am Perfectly Willing To Admit That It Provides The Only Really Amusing Form Of Government Ever Endured By Mankind.

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.

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

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.

It Is The Fundamental Theory Of All The More Recent American Law...that The Average Citizen Is Half-witted, And Hence Not To Be Trusted To Either His Own Devices Or His Own Thoughts.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To Every Complex Question There Is A Simple Answer And It Is Wrong.

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

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

No Democratic Delusion Is More Fatuous Than That Which Holds That All Men Are Capable Of Reason, And Hence Susceptible To Conversion By Evidence. If Religions Depended Upon Evidence For Their Prolongation, Then All Of Them Would Collapse.

People Do Not Expect To Find Chastity In A Whorehouse. Why, Then, Do They Expect To Find Honesty And Humanity In Government, A Congeries Of Institutions Whose Modus Operandi Consists Of Lying, Cheating, Stealing, And If Need Be, Murdering Those Who Resist?

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.

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

If All The Lawyers Were Hanged Tomorrow, And Their Bones Were Sold To A Mah Jong Factory, We'd All Be Freer And Safer, And Our Taxes Would Be Reduced By Almost A Half.

Science Is Unflinchingly Deterministic, And It Has Begun To Force Its Determinism Into Morals. On Some Shining Tomorrow A Psychoanalyst May Be Put Into The Box To Prove That Perjury Is Simply A Compulsion Neurosis, Like Beating Time With The Foot At A Concert Or Counting The Lampposts Along The Highway.

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

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

A National Political Campaign Is Better Than The Best Circus Ever Heard Of, With A Mass Baptism And A Couple Of Hangings Thrown In.

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

Such Is The Art Of Writing As Dreiser Understands It And Practices It--an Endless Piling Up Of Minutiae, An Almost Ferocious Tracking Down Of Ions, Electrons And Molecules, An Unshakable Determination To Tell It All. One Is Amazed By The Mole-like Diligence Of The Man, And No Less By His Exasperating Disregard For The Ease Of His Readers.

A Woman Usually Respects Her Father, But Her View Of Her Husband Is Mingled With Contempt, For She Is Of Course Privy To The Transparent Devices By Which She Snared Him.

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.

The Liberation Of The Human Mind Has Never Been Furthered By Dunderheads.

I Know Of No Human Being Who Has A Better Time Than An Eager And Energetic Young Reporter.

We Have Had More Brilliant Presidents Than Cleveland, And One Or Two Who Were Considerably More Profound, But We Have Never Had One, At Least Since Washington, Whose Fundamental Character Was Solider And More Admirable.

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.

I Believe In Only One Thing And That Thing Is Human Liberty. If Ever A Man Is To Achieve Anything Like Dignity, It Can Happen Only If Superior Men Are Given Absolute Freedom To Think What They Want To Think And Say What They Want To Say. I Am Against Any Man And Any Organization Which Seeks To Limit Or Deny That Freedom... [and] The Superior Man Can Be Sure Of Freedom Only If It Is Given To All Men.

Whenever A Reporter Is Assigned To Cover A Methodist Conference, He Comes Home An Atheist.

A Nun, At Best, Is Only Half A Woman, Just As A Priest Is Only Half A Man.

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

A Fool Who, After Plain Warning, Persists In Dosing Himself With Dangerous Drugs Should Be Free To Do So, For His Death Is A Benefit To The Race In General.

In The United States...politics Is Purged Of All Menace, All Sinister Quality, All Genuine Significance, And Stuffed With Such Gorgeous Humors, Such Inordinate Farce That One Comes To The End Of A Campaign With One's Ribs Loose, And Ready For King Lear, Or A Hanging, Or A Course Of Medical Journals.

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.

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.

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.

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

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

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.

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

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

I Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Do Missionaries.

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

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

I Think The Negro People Should Feel Secure Enough By Now To Face A Reasonable Ridicule Without Terror. I Am Unalterably Opposed To All Efforts To Put Down Free Speech, Whatever The Excuse.

One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten-thousand Syllogisms.

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

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

When Fanatics Are On Top There Is No Limit To Oppression.

A Bad Man Is The Sort Who Weeps Every Time He Speaks Of A Good Woman.

Of All The Human Qualities, The One I Admire The Most Is Competence. A Tailor Who Is Really Able To Cut And Fit A Coat Seems To Me An Admirable Man, And By The Same Token A University Professor Who Knows Little Or Nothing Of The Thing He Presumes To Teach Seems To Me To Be A Fraud And A Rascal.

University Professors

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

I'm Ombibulous. I Drink Every Known Alcoholic Drink And Enjoy Them All.

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

There Are Some People Who Read Too Much: The Bibliobibuli.

God Is A Republican, And Santa Claus Is A Democrat.

Those Tragic Comedians, The Chamber Of Commerce Red Hunters, The Women's Christian Temperance Union Smellers, The Censors Of Books, The Klan Regulators, The Methodist Prowlers, The Baptist Guardians Of Sacred Vessels-we Have The National Mentality Of A Police Lieutenant.

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.

The Real Man Lies In The Depths Of Subconscious.

Jealousy Is A Keen Observer, But Looks For All The Wrong Signs.

[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.

Every Decent Man Is Ashamed Of The Government He Lives Under.

Balloonists Have An Unsurpassed View Of The Scenery, But There Is Always The Possibility That It May Collide With Them.

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 A Folly.

Man Is Always Looking For Someone To Boast To; Woman Is Always Looking For A Shoulder To Put Her Head On.

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.

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

Mutual Interest

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

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

He Who Eats Alone Chokes Alone.

Theology Is The Effort To Explain The Unknowable In Terms Of The Not Worth Knowing.

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

There Comes A Time In Every Man's Life When He's Consumed By The Desire To Spit On His Palms, Hoist The Black Flag And Start Cutting Throats.

The Genuine Music Lover May Accept The Carnal Husk Of Opera To Get At The Kernel Of Actual Music Within, But That Is No Sign That He Approves The Carnal Husk Or Enjoys Gnawing Through It.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Human Life Is Basically A Comedy. Even Its Tragedies Often Seem Comic To The Spectator, And Not Infrequently They Actually Have Comic Touches To The Victim. Happiness Probably Consists Largely In The Capacity To Detect And Relish Them. A Man Who Can Laugh, If Only At Himself, Is Never Really Miserable.

I Never Lecture, Not Because I Am Shy Or A Bad Speaker, But Simply Because I Detest The Sort Of People Who Go To Lectures And Don't Want To Meet Them.

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

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.

If We Assume That Man Actually Does Resemble God, Then We Are Forced Into The Impossible Theory That God Is A Coward, An Idiot And A Bounder.

The Art Of Politics, Under Democracy, Is Simply The Art Of Ringing It. Two Branches Reveal Themselves. There Is The Art Of The Demagogue, And There Is The Art Of What May Be Called, By A Shot-gun Marriage Of Latin And Greek, The Demaslave. They Are Complementary, And Both Of Them Are Degrading To Their Practitioners. The Demagogue Is One Who Preaches Doctrines He Knows To Be Untrue To Men He Knows To Be Idiots. The Demaslave Is One Who Listens To What These Idiots Have To Say And Then Pretends That He Believes It Himself.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It Takes A Long While For A Naturally Trustful Person To Reconcile Himself To The Idea That After All God Will Not Help Him

Long Distance Relationship

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

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.

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.

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

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.

In Human History A Moral Victory Is Always A Disaster, For It Debauches And Degrades Both The Victor And The Vanquished.

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

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

Law And Its Instrument, Government, Are Necessary To The Peace And Safety Of All Of Us, But All Of Us, Unless We Live The Lives Of Mud Turtles, Frequently Find Them Arrayed Against Us.

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.

You Can't Do Anything About The Length Of Your Life, But You Can Do Something About Its Width And Depth.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

On The One Hand, We May Tell The Truth, Regardless Of Consequences, And On The Other Hand We May Mellow It And Sophisticate It To Make It Humane And Tolerable.

Telling The Truth

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.

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

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

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.

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

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

Democracy Is The Art And Science Of Running The Circus From The Monkey Cage.

One Yearns Unspeakably For A Composer Who Gives Out His Pair Of Honest Themes, And Then Develops Them Unashamed, And Then Hangs A Brisk Coda To Them, And Then Shuts Up.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Trouble With Communism Is The Communists, Just As The Trouble With Christianity Is The Christians.

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

Good Government Is That Which Delivers The Citizen From Being Done Out Of His Life And Property Too Arbitrarily And Violently-one That Relieves Him Sufficiently From The Barbaric Business Of Guarding Them To Enable Him To Engage In Gentler, More Dignified, And More Agreeable Undertakings.

The More A Man Dreams, The Less He Believes.

The Great Achievement Of Liberal Protestantism Was To Make God Boring.

Great Achievement

How Do They Taste? They Taste Like More.

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

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

[c]lass Consciousness Is Not One Of Our National Diseases; We Suffer, Indeed, From Its Opposite-the Delusion That Class Barriers Are Not Real. That Delusion Reveals Itself In Many Forms, Some Of Them As Beautiful As A Glass Eye. One Is The Liberal Doctrine That A Prairie Demagogue Promoted To The United States Senate Will Instantly Show All The Sagacity Of A Metternich ... Another Is The Doctrine That A Moronrun Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Cease Thereby To Be A Moron.

All American Wars (except The Civil War) Have Been Fought With The Odds Overwhelmingly In Favor Of The Americans. In The History Of Armed Combat Such Affairs As The Mexican And Spanish-american Wars Must Be Ranked, Not As Wars At All, But As Organized Assassinations. In The Two World Wars, No American Faced A Bullet Until His Adversaries Had Been Worn Down By Years Of Fighting Others.

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

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.

No Romantic Novel Ever Written In America, By Man Or Woman, Is One Half So Beautiful As My Ántonia.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality.

The Average Man Never Really Thinks From End To End Of His Life. The Mental Activity Of Such People Is Only A Mouthing Of Cliches. What They Mistake For Thought Is Simply A Repetition Of What They Have Heard. My Guess Is That Well Over 80 Percent Of The Human Race Goes Through Life Without Having A Single Original Thought.

The Notion That A Radical Is One Who Hates His Country Is Naïve And Usually Idiotic. He Is, More Likely, One Who Likes His Country More Than The Rest Of Us, And Is Thus More Disturbed Than The Rest Of Us When He Sees It Debauched. He Is Not A Bad Citizen Turning To Crime; He Is A Good Citizen Driven To Despair.

The Kind Of Man Who Demands That Government Enforce His Ideas Is Always The Kind Whose Ideas Are Idiotic.

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

At A Time When The Respectable Bourgeois Youngsters Of My Generation Were College Freshmen, Oppressed By Simian Sophomores And Affronted With Balderdash Daily And Hourly By Chalky Pedagogues, I Was At Large In A Wicked Seaport Of Half A Million People, With A Front Seat At Every Public Show, As Free Of The Night As Of Day, And Getting Earfuls Of Instruction In A Hundred Giddy Arcana, None Of Them Taught In Schools.... [but] If I Neglected The Humanities, I Was Meanwhile Laying In All The Worldly Wisdom Of A Police Lieutenant, A Bartender, A Shyster Lawyer, Or A Midwife.

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

For It Is An Absurdity To Call A Country Civilized In Which A Decent And Industrious Man, Laboriously Mastering A Trade Which Is Valuble And Necessary To The Common Weal, Has No Assurance That It Will Sustain Him While He Stands Ready To Practice It, Or Keep Him Out Of The Poorhouse When Illness Or Age Makes Him Idle.

After All, Why Be Good? How Many Will Actually Believe It Of Us?

The Worst Of Marriage Is That It Makes A Woman Believe That All Men Are Just As Easy To Fool.

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