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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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There Has Been No

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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Some Immemorial Imbecilities Have Been Added Deliberately, On The Ground That It Is Just As Interesting To Note How Foolish Men Have Been As To Note How Wise They Have Been.

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

The Way To Hold A Husband Is To Keep Him A Little Jealous; The Way To Lose Him Is To Keep Him A Little More Jealous.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Believing Mind Is Externally Impervious To Evidence. The Most That Can Be Accomplished With It Is To Induce It To Substitute One Delusion For Another. It Rejects All Overt Evidence As Wicked.

Every Man Is His Own Hell.

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

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.

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

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

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 Was Morality That Burned The Books Of The Ancient Sages, And Morality That Halted The Free Inquiry Of The Golden Age And Substituted For It The Credulous Imbecility Of The Age Of Faith. It Was A Fixed Moral Code And A Fixed Theology Which Robbed The Human Race Of A Thousand Years By Wasting Them Upon Alchemy, Heretic-burning , Witchcraft And Sacerdotalism.

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.

If Experience Teaches Us Anything At All, It Teaches Us This: That A Good Politician, Under Democracy, Is Quite As Unthinkable As An Honest Burglar.

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

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

Change Is Not Progress.

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.

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.

A Sense Of Humor Always Withers In The Presence Of The Messianic Delusion, Like Justice And The Truth In Front Of Patriotic Passion.

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.

War May Make A Fool Of Man, But It By No Means Degrades Him; On The Contrary, It Tends To Exalt Him, And Its Net Effects Are Much Like Those Of Motherhood On Women.

The Most Popular Man Under A Democracy Is Not The Most Democratic Man, But The Most Despotic Man. The Common Folk Delight In The Exactions Of Such A Man. They Like Him To Boss Them. Their Natural Gait Is The Goose Step.

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

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.

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

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.

Strike An Average Between What A Woman Thinks Of Her Husband A Month Before She Marries Him And What She Thinks Of Him A Year Afterward, And You Will Have The Truth About Him.

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

The 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.

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

The Difference Between The Smartest Dog And The Stupidest Man - Say A Tennessee Holy Roller - Is Really Very Small.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want, And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.

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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.

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

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

When I Think Of Anything Properly Describable As A Beautiful Idea, It Is Always In The Form Of Music. I Have Written And Printed Probably 10,000,000 Words In English But All The Same I Shall Die An Inarticulate Man, For My Best Ideas Beset Me In A Language I Know Only Vaguely And Speak Only As A Child.

It Is Only Doubt That Creates.

He Marries Best Who Puts It Off Until It Is Too Late.

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

What Are The Hallmarks Of A Competent Writer Of Fiction? The First, It Seems To Me, Is That He Should Be Immensely Interested In Human Beings, And Have An Eye Sharp Enough To See Into Them, And A Hand Clever Enough To Draw Them As They Are. The Second Is That He Should Be Able To Set Them In Imaginary Situations Which Display The Contents Of Their Psyches Effectively, And So Carry His Reader Swiftly And Pleasantly From Point To Point Of What Is Called A Good Story.

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

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

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

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.

The Notion That Anything Is Gained By Fixing A Language In A Groove Is Cherished Only By Pedants.

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

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

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

Penetrating So Many Secrets, We Cease To Believe In The Unknowable. But There It Sits Nevertheless, Calmly Licking Its Chops

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

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.

Religion Deserves No More Respect Than A Pile Of Garbage.

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.

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

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

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.

Morality Is Nothing But A Struggle For Safety

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

To 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.

The Life Of Man In This World Is Like The Life Of A Fly In A Room Filled With 100 Boys, Each Armed With A Fly-swatter.

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

A Living Language Is Like A Man Suffering Incessantly From Small Hemorrhages, And What It Needs Above All Else Is Constant Transactions Of New Blood From Other Tongues. The Day The Gates Go Up, That Day It Begins To Die.

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.

Government Today Is Growing Too Strong To Be Safe. There Are No Longer Any Citizens In The World There Are Only Subjects. They Work Day In And Day Out For Their Masters They Are Bound To Die For Their Masters At Call. Out Of This Working And Dying They Tend To Get Less And Less.

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

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

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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.

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.

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

The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal.

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.

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.

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Christian - One Who Is Willing To Serve Three Gods, But Draws The Line At One Wife.

What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

Freedom Of Press Is Limited To Those Who Own One.

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

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

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

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

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

School Days, I Believe, Are The Unhappiest In The Whole Span Of Human Existence.

It Is Often Argued That Religion Is Valuable Because It Makes Men Good, But Even If This Were True It Would Not Be A Proof That Religion Is True. That Would Be An Extension Of Pragmatism Beyond Endurance. Santa Claus Makes Children Good In Precisely The Same Way, And Yet No One Would Argue Seriously That The Fact Proves His Existence. The Defense Of Religion Is Full Of Such Logical Imbecilities.

He Sailed Through American History Like A Steel Ship Loaded With Monoliths Of Granite.

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The Best Client Is A Scared Millionaire.

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

If There Were Only Three Women Left In The World, Two Of Them Would Immediately Convene A Court-martial To Try The Other One.

Justice Is What You Get When You Run Out Of Money.

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Love Is Photogenic. It Needs Darkness Room To Develop

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.

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The Worst Government Is Often The Most Moral. One Composed Of Cynics Is Often Very Tolerant And Humane. But When Fanatics Are On Top There Is No Limit To Oppression.

The Aim Of Poetry, It Appears, Is To Fill The Mind With Lofty Thoughts--not To Give It Joy, But To Give It A Grand And Somewhat Gaudy Sense Of Virtue. The Essay Is A Weapon Against The Degenerate Tendencies Of The Age. The Novel, Properly Conceived, Is A Means Of Uplifting The Spirit; Its Aim Is To Inspire, Not Merely To Satisfy The Low Curiosity Of Man In Man.

Nietzsche, To The End Of His Days, Remained A Russian Pastor's Son, And Hence Two-thirds Of A Puritan; He Erected His War Upon Holiness, Toward The End, Into A Sort Of Holy War.

Firmness In Decision Is Often Merely A Form Of Stupidity. It Indicates An Inability To Think The Same Thing Out Twice.

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.

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

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.

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

Honor Is Simply The Morality Of Superior Men.

A Mood Of Constructive Criticism Being Upon Me, I Propose Forthwith That The Method Of Choosing Legislators Now Prevailing In The United States Be Abandoned And That The Method Used In Choosing Juries Be Substituted. That Is To Say, I Propose That The Men Who Make Our Laws Be Chosen By Chance And Against Will Of All The Rest Of Us, As Now.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Man Who Boasts That He Habitually Tells The Truth Is Simply A Man With No Respect For It. It Is Not A Thing To Be Thrown About Loosely, Like Small Change; It Is Something To Be Cherished And Hoarded And Disbursed Only When Absolutely Necessary. 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.

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?

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

The Only Kind Of Freedom That The Mob Can Imagine Is Freedom To Annoy And Oppress Its Betters, And That Is Precisely The Kind That We Mainly Have.

Politics, As Hopeful Men Practise It In The World, Consists Mainly Of The Delusion That A Change In Form Is A Change In Substance.

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

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.

Off Goes The Head Of The King, And Tyranny Gives Way To Freedom. The Change Seems Abysmal. Then, Bit By Bit, The Face Of Freedom Hardens, And By And By It Is The Old Face Of Tyranny. Then Another Cycle, And Another. But Under The Play Of All These Opposites There Is Something Fundamental And Permanent - The Basic Delusion That Men May Be Governed And Yet Be Free.

Conscience Is The Accumulated Sediment Of Ancestral Faint- Heartedness

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

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

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

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

The Objection To A Communist Always Resolves Itself Into The Fact That He Is Not A Gentleman.

It Is Not A Sign Of Communal Well-being When Men Turn To Their Government To Execute All Their Business For Them, But Rather A Sign Of Decay, As In The United States Today. The State, Indeed, Is But One Of The Devices That A Really Healthy Community Sets Up To Manage Its Affairs.

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.

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.

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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 Two Main Ideas That Run Through All Of My Writing, Whether It Be Literary Criticism Or Political Polemic Are These: I Am Strong In Favor Of Liberty And I Hate Fraud.

A Professor Must Have A Theory As A Dog Must Have Fleas.

The Acting That One Sees Upon The Stage Does Not Show How Human Beings Comport Themselves In Crises, But How Actors Think They Ought To. It Is Thus, Like Poetry And Religion, A Device For Gladdening The Heart With What Is Palpably Not True.

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

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

It Is Only Doubt That Creates. It Is Only The Minority That Counts.

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

Consider Him In His Highest Incarnation: The University Professor. What Is His Function? Simply To Pass On To Fresh Generations Of Numskulls A Body Of So-called Knowledge That Is Fragmentary, Unimportant, And, In Large Part, Untrue. His Whole Professional Activity Is Circumscribed By The Prejudices, Vanities And Avarices Of His University Trustees, I.e., A Committee Of Soap-boilers, Nail Manufacturers, Bank-directors And Politicians. The Moment He Offends These Vermin He Is Undone. He Cannot So Much As Think Aloud Without Running A Risk Of Having Them Fan His Pantaloons.

All Of The Great Patriots Now Engaged In Edging And Squirming Their Way Toward The Presidency Of The Republic Run True To Form. That Is To Say, They Are All Extremely Wary, And All More Or Less Palpable Frauds. What They Want, Primarily, Is The Job; The Necessary Equipment Of Unescapable Issues, Immutable Principles And Soaring Ideals Can Wait Until It Becomes More Certain Which Way The Mob Will Be Whooping.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

Man's Objection To Love Is That It Dies Hard: Women's, That When It Is Dead It Stays Dead.

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.

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.

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.

Alimony - The Ransom That The Happy Pay To The Devil.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Only Cure For Contempt Is Counter-contempt.

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

No Man Could Bring Himself To Reveal His True Character, And, Above All, His True Limitations As A Citizen And A Christian, His True Meannesses, His True Imbecilities, To His Friends, Or Even To His Wife. Honest Autobiography Is Therefore A Contradiction In Terms: The Moment A Man Considers Himself, Even In Petto, He Tries To Gild And Fresco Himself. Thus A Man's Wife, However Realistic Her View Of Him, Always Flatters Him In The End, For The Worst She Sees In Him Is Appreciably Better, By The Time She Sees It, Than What Is Actually There.

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.

Whatever The Label On The Parties, Or The War Cries Issuing From The Demagogues Who Lead Them, The Practical Choice Is Between The Plutocracy On The One Side And A Rabble Of Preposterous Impossibilists On The Other.

Women Decide The Larger Questions Of Life Correctly And Quickly, Not Because They Are Lucky Guessers, Not Because They Are Divinely Inspired, Not Because They Practise A Magic Inherited From Savagery, But Simply And Solely Because They Have Sense. They See At A Glance What Most Men Could Not See With Searchlights And Telescopes.... They Are The Supreme Realists Of The Race.

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

At The End Of One Millennium And Nine Centuries Of Christianity, It Remains An Unshakable Assumption Of The Law In All Christian Countries And Of The Moral Judgement Of Christians Everywhere That If A Man And A Woman, Entering A Room Together, Close The Door Behind Them, The Man Will Come Out Sadder And The Woman Wiser.

The Worst Government Is The Most Moral.

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

Fame: An Embalmer Trembling With Stage Fright.

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.

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 Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy.

Democracies Have

Every Lynching Deprives Its Victim Of His Life Without Due Process Of Law, And Denies Him An Equal Protection Of The Law. The States Are Charged With Punishing All Such Invasions As The Common Rights Of The Citizens, But Some Of Them Have Failed In Their Effort To Do So, And Others Have Not Honestly Tried. Meanwhile, Lynchings Continue, And Though They Do Not Increase In Number, They Show Some Tendency To Increase In Savagery.

The Theory Seems To Be That As Long As A Man Is A Failure He Is One Of God's Children, But That As Soon As He Succeeds He Is Taken Over By The Devil.

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

The Net Effect Of Clarence Darrow's Great Speech Yesterday Seemed To Be Precisely The Same As If He Had Bawled It Up A Rainspout In The Interior Of Afghanistan.

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.

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

There Is, In Fact, No Reason To Believe That Any Given Natural Phenomenon, However Marvelous It May Seem Today, Will Remain Forever Inexplicable. Soon Or Late The Laws Governing The Production Of Life Itself Will Be Discovered In The Laboratory, And Man May Set Up Business As A Creator On His Own Account. The Thing, Indeed, Is Not Only Conceivable; It Is Even Highly Probable.

A Free Citizen In A Free State, It Seems To Me, Has An Inalienable Right To Play With Whomsoever He Will, So Long As He Does Not Disturb The General Peace. If Any Other Citizen, Offended By The Spectacle, Makes A Pother, Then That Other Citizen, And Not The Man Exercising His Inalienable Right, Should Be Put Down By The Police.

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

The State Doesn't Just Want You To Obey, It Wants To Make You Want To Obey.

To The Best Of My Knowledge And Belief, The Average American Newspaper, Even Of The So-called Better Sort, Is Not Only Quite As Bad As Upton Sinclair Says It Is, But 10 Times Worse

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.

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

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.

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