Background Image

...

The Wholly Manly Man Lacks The Wit Necessary To Give Objective Form To His Soaring And Secret Dreams, And The Wholly Womanly Woman Is Apt To Be Too Cynical A Creature To Dream At All.

-H. L. Mencken

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Wholly Manly Man

H. L. Mencken

...

The Wholly Manly Man Lacks The Wit Necessary To Give Objective Form To His Soaring And Secret Dreams, And The Wholly Womanly Woman Is Apt To Be Too Cynical A Creature To Dream At All.

Views: 5

Topic

More From H. L. Mencken

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.

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

It Is Even Harder For The Average Ape To Believe That He Has Descended From Man.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Real Charm Of The United States Is That It Is The Only Comic Country Ever Heard Of.

I Believe In The Complete Freedom Of Thought And Speech - Alike For The Humblest Man And The Mightiest, And In The Utmost Freedom Of Conduct That Is Consistent With Living In Organized Society.

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.

Man Makes Love By Braggadocio, And Woman Makes Love By Listening.

Moral Certainty Is Always A Sign Of Cultural Inferiority. The More Uncivilized The Man, The Surer He Is That He Knows Precisely What Is Right And What Is Wrong. 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. The Truly Civilized Man Is Always Skeptical And Tolerant.

New York: A Third-rate Babylon.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Democracy Is A Pathetic Belief In The Collective Wisdom Of Individual Ignorance.

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.

I Never Agree With Communists Or Any Other Kind Of Kept Men.

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

Pedagogues: More Than Any Other Class Of Blind Leaders Of The Blind They Are Responsible For The Degrading Standardization Which Now Afflicts The American People.

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

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

I've Made It A Rule Never To Drink By Daylight And Never To Refuse A Drink After Dark.

We Suffer Most When The White House Busts With Ideas.

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.

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

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.

At Eight Or Nine, I Suppose Intelligence Is No More Than A Small Spot Of Light On The Floor Of A Large And Murky Room.

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

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

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.

The Aim Of New Deals Is To Exterminate The Class Of Creditors And Thrust All Men Into That Of Debtors. It Is Like Trying To Breedcattle With All Cows And No Bulls.

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.

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

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

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.

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

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'.

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

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

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.

There Is Always An Easy Solution To Every Problem - Neat, Plausible, And Wrong.

Simple Solutions

The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

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

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.

Don't Overestimate The Decency Of The Human Race.

A Galileo Could No More Be Elected President Of The United States Than He Could Be Elected Pope Of Rome. Both High Posts Are Reserved For Men Favored By God With An Extraordinary Genius For Swathing The Bitter Facts Of Life In Bandages Of Self-illusion.

Socialist: A Man Suffering From An Overwhelming Conviction To Believe What Is Not True.

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

What Restrains Us From Killing Is Partly Fear Of Punishment, Partly Moral Scruple, And Partly What May Be Described As A Sense Of Humor

The Ideal Government Of All Reflective Men, From Aristotle Onward, Is One Which Lets The Individual Alone - One Which Barely Escapes Being No Government At All.

All Of The American's Foreign Wars Have Been Fought With Foes Either Too Weak To Resist Them Or Too Heavily Engaged Elsewhere To Make More Than A Half-hearted Attempt. The Combats With Mexico And Spain Were Not Wars; They Were Simply Lynchings.

Watching Two Women Kiss Is Like Watching Two Prizefighters Shake Hands.

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.

It Is Surely No Mere Coincidence That The Land Of The Emancipated And Enthroned Woman Is Also The Land Of Canned Soup, Of Canned Pork And Beans, Of Whole Meals In Cans, And Of Everything Else Ready Made.

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

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

The Common Man Knows Exactly What He Wants...and Deserves To Get It Good And Hard.

Wherever I Sit Is The Head Of The Table.

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

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

Husbands Never Become Good; They Merely Become Proficient.

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

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

He Who Eats Alone Chokes Alone.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

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

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.

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

Liberty Is Of Small Value To The Lower Third Of Humanity. They Greatly Prefer Security, Which Means Protection By Some Class Above Them. They Are Always In Favor Of Despots Who Promise To Feed Them. The Only Liberty An Inferior Man Really Cherishes Is The Liberty To Quit Work, Stretch Out In The Sun, And Scratch Himself.

Never Underestimate The Bad Taste Of The American Public

Never Underestimate

A Society Made Up Of Individuals Who Were All Capable Of Original Thought Would Probably Be Unendurable.

Original Thought

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

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, In That All Government Must Necessarily Make War On Liberty, And That The Democratic Government Is At Least As Bad As Any Of The Other Forms.

[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.

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

Shave A Gorilla And It Would Be Almost Impossible, At Twenty Paces, To Distinguish Him From A Heavyweight Champion Of The World. Skin A Chimpanzee, And It Would Take An Autopsy To Prove He Was Not A Theologian.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Home Is Not A Mere Transient Shelter: Its Essence Lies In The Personalities Of The People Who Live In It.

The Thing Constantly Overlooked By Those Hopefuls Who Talk About Abolishing War Is That It Is By No Means An Evidence Of Decay But Rather A Proof Of Health And Vigor.

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

...no Man Of Genuinely Superior Intelligence Has Ever Been An Actor. Even Supposing A Young Man Of Appreciable Mental Powers To Be Lured Upon The Stage, As Philosophers Are Occasionally Lured Into Bordellos, His Mind Would Be Inevitably And Almost Immediately Destroyed By The Gaudy Nonsense Issuing From His Mouth Every Night.

To Be Happy One Must Be (a) Well Fed, Unhounded By Sordid Cares, At Ease In Zion, (b) Full Of A Comfortable Feeling Of Superiority To The Masses Of One's Fellow Men, And (c) Delicately And Unceasingly Amused According To One's Taste. It Is My Contention That, If This Definition Be Accepted, There Is No Country In The World Wherein A Man Constituted As I Am - A Man Of My Peculiar Weakness, Vanities, Appetites, And Aversions - Can Be So Happy As He Can Be In The United States.

When I Die, I Shall Be Content To Vanish Into Nothingness.... No Show, However Good, Could Conceivably Be Good Forever I Do Not Believe In Immortality, And Have No Desire For It.

As Long As You Represent Me As Praising Alcohol I Shall Not Complain. It Is, I Believe, The Greatest Of Human Inventions, And By Far - Much Greater Than Hell, The Radio Or The Bichloride Tablet.

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.

The Average Schoolmaster Is, And Always Must Be, An Ass.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

American Journalism (like The Journalism Of Any Other Country) Is Predominantly Paltry And Worthless. Its Pretensions Are Enormous, But Its Achievements Are Insignificant.

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.

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.

As Long As You Represent Me As Praising Alcohol I Shall Not Complain.

Platitude: An Idea (a) That Is Admitted To Be True By Everyone, And (b) That Is Not True.

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.

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

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.

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

I Am Never Much Interested In The Effects Of What I Write....i Seldom Read With Any Attention The Reviews Of My...books. Two Times Out Of Three I Know Something About The Reviewer, And In Very Few Cases Have I Any Respect For His Judgments. Thus His Praise, If He Praises Me, Leaves Me Unmoved. I Can't Recall Any Review That Has Even Influenced Me In The Slightest. I Live In Sort Of A Vacuum, And I Suspect That Most Other Writers Do, Too. It Is Hard To Imagine One Of The Great Ones Paying Any Serious Attention To Contemporary Opinion.

Everyman Is Thoroughly Happy Twice In His Life, Just After He Has Met His First Love, And Just After He Has Left His Last One.

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

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.

College Football Is A Game Which Would Be Much More Interesting If The Faculty Played Instead Of The Students, And Even More Interesting If The Trustees Played. There Would Be A Great Increase In Broken Arms, Legs, And Necks, And Simultaneously An Appreciable Diminution In The Loss To Humanity.

There Is A Saying In Baltimore That Crabs May Be Prepared In Fifty Ways And That All Of Them Are Good.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

I Have Often Argued That A Poet More Than Thirty Years Old Is Simply An Overgrown Child. I Begin To Suspect That There May Be Some Truth In It.

One Seldom Discovers A True Believer That Is Worth Knowing.

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.

Hygiene Is The Corruption Of Medicine By Morality. It Is Impossible To Find A Hygienist Who Does Not Debase His Theory Of The Healthful With A Theory Of The Virtuous. ... The Aim Of Medicine Is Surely Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices.

The Way To Deal With Superstition Is Not To Be Polite To It, But To Tackle It With All Arms, And So Rout It, Cripple It, And Make It Forever Infamous And Ridiculous.

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.

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 Christian Church, In Its Attitude Toward Science, Shows The Mind Of A More Or Less Enlightened Man Of The Thirteenth Century. It No Longer Believes That The Earth Is Flat, But It Is Still Convinced That Prayer Can Cure After Medicine Fails.

The Dying Man Doesn't Struggle Much And He Isn't Much Afraid. As His Alkalies Give Out He Succumbs To A Blest Stupidity. His Mindfogs. His Will Power Vanishes. He Submits Decently. He Scarcely Gives A Damn.

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.

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

The Feelings That Beethoven Put Into His Music Were The Feelings Of A God. There Was Something Olympian In His Snarls And Rages, And There Was A Touch Of Hellfire In His Mirth.

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

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

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

The Physical Business Of Writing Is Unpleasant To Me, But The Psychic Satisfaction Of Discharging Bad Ideas In Worse English Makes Me Forget It.

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

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

One Smart Reader Is Worth A Thousand Boneheads.

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.

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

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

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

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 Worshiper Is The Father Of The Gods.

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

In The United States, Doing Good Has Come To Be, Like Patriotism, A Favorite Device Of Persons With Something To Sell.

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

The Highfalutin Aims Of Democracy, Whether Real Or Imaginary, Are Always Assumed To Be Identical With Its Achievements. This, Of Course, Is Sheer Hallucination. Not One Of Those Aims, Not Even The Aim Of Giving Every Adult A Vote, Has Been Realized. It Has No More Made Men Wise And Free Than Christianity Has Made Them Good.

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

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

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.

Liberals Have Many Tails And Chase Them All.

Five Years Of Prohibition Have Had, At Least, This One Benign Effect: They Have Completely Disposed Of All The Favorite Arguments Of The Prohibitionists. None Of The Great Boons And Usufructs That Were To Follow The Passage Of The Eighteenth Amendment Has Come To Pass. There Is Not Less Drunkenness In The Republic, But More. There Is Not Less Crime, But More. There Is Not Less Insanity, But More. The Cost Of Government Is Not Smaller, But Vastly Greater. Respect For Law Has Not Increased, But Diminished.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out For Himself.

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.

If There Was Ever A Dissenter From The National Optimismit Was Surely Edgar Allan Poe--without Question The Bravest And Mostoriginal, If Perhaps Also The Least Orderly And Judicious, Of All The Critics That We Have Produced.

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

The 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.

When I Hear Artists Or Authors Making Fun Of Businessmen, I Think Of A Regiment In Which The Band Makes Fun Of The Cooks.

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

I Detest Converts Almost As Much As I Do Missionaries.

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

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.

I Can't Imagine A Genuinely Intelligent Boy Getting Much Out Of College, Even Out Of A Good College, Save It Be A Cynical Habit Of Mind.

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

People Say We Need Religion When What They Really Mean Is We Need Police.

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.

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

The Central Difficulty Lies In The Fact That All Of The Sciences Have Made Such Great Progress During The Last Century That They Have Got Quite Beyond The Reach Of Man

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

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

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

Say What You Will About The Ten Commandments, You Must Always Come Back To The Pleasant Fact That There Are Only Ten Of Them.

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

Here The Only Genuine Conflict Is Between True Believers. Of A Given Text In Holy Writ One Faction May Say This Thing And Another That, But Both Agree Unreservedly That The Text Itself Is Impeccable, And Neither In The Midst Of The Most Violent Disputation Would Venture To Accuse The Other Of Doubt. To Call A Man A Doubter In These Parts Is Equal To Accusing Him Of Cannibalism. Even The Infidel Scopes Himself Is Not Charged With Any Such Infamy.

The American People, Taking One With Another, Constitute The Most Timorous, Snivelling, Poltroonish, Ignominious Mob Of Serfs And Goosesteppers Ever Gathered Under One Flag In Christendom Since The End Of The Middle Ages.

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

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

I Believe That No Discovery Of Fact, However Trivial, Can Be Wholly Useless To The Race, And That No Trumpeting Of Falsehood, However Virtuous In Intent, Can Be Anything But Vicious.

Trending Author

Dylan McDermott

Charlie Gonzalez

Christopher Isherwood

Margaret Fuller

Category