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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.

-H. L. Mencken

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When I Think Of

H. L. Mencken

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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.

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

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.

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

Sometimes The Idiots Outvote The Sensible People.

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

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

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

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

To Large Numbers Of American Citizens Life In Certain Parts Of The Country Becomes Intolerably Hazardous. They May Be Seized On Any Pretext, However Flimsy, And Put To Death With Horrible Tortures. No Government Pretending To Be Civilized Can Go On Condoning Such Atrocities. Either It Must Make Every Possible Effort To Put Them Down Or It Must Suffer The Scorn And Contempt Of Christendom.

The Learned Are Seldom Pretty Fellows, And In Many Cases Their Appearance Tends To Discourage A Love Of Study In The Young.

[a Formula For Answering Controversial Letters -- Without Even Reading The Letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You May Be Right.

No One In This World, So Far As I Know--and I Have Searched The Records For Years, And Employed Agents To Help Me--has Ever Lost Money By Underestimating The Intelligence Of The Great Masses Of The Plain People. Nor Has Any One Ever Lost Public Office Thereby. The Mistake That Is Made Always Runs The Other Way. Because The Plain People Are Able To Speak And Understand, And Even, In Many Cases, To Read And Write, It Is Assumed That They Have Ideas In Their Heads, And An Appetite For More. This Assumption Is Folly. They Dislike Ideas, For Ideas Make Them Uncomfortable.

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

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

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 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.

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.

The Doctrine That The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy Is Like Saying That The Cure Of Crime Is More Crime.

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.

Poetry Is A Comforting Piece Of Fiction Set To More Or Less Lascivious Music.

If What I May Believe - About Gall-stones, The Constitution, Castor Oil, Or God - Is Conditioned By Law, Then I Am Not A Free Man.

All Government, In Its Essence, Is A Conspiracy Against The Superior Man: It's One Permanent Object Is To Oppress Him And Cripple Him... One Of Its Primary Functions Is To Regiment Men By Force, To Make Them As Much Alike As Possible And As Dependent Upon One Another As Possible, To Search Out And Combat Originality Among Them.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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. Their Principal Device To That End Is To Search Out Groups Who Pant And Pine For Something They Can't Get And To Promise To Give It To Them. Nine Times Out Of Ten That Promise Is Worth Nothing. The Tenth Time Is Made Good By Looting A To Satisfy B. In Other Words, Government Is A Broker In Pillage, And Every Election Is Sort Of An Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

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.

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

Complete Masculinity And Stupidity Are Often Indistinguishable.

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

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

The Most Valuable Of All Human Possessions, Next To A Superior And Disdainful Air, Is The Reputation Of Being Well-to-do.

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.

Evil: That Which One Believes Of Others. It Is A Sin To Believe Evil Of Others, But It Is Seldom A Mistake

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 Effort To Reconcile Science And Religion Is Almost Always Made, Not By Theologians, But By Scientists Unable To Shake Off Altogether The Piety Absorbed With Their Mother's Milk.

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.

The Music Critic, Huneber, Could Never Quite Make Up His Mind About A New Symphony Until He Had Seen The Composer's Mistress.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Old Testament, As Everyone Who Has Looked Into It Is Aware, Drips With Blood; There Is, Indeed, No More Bloody Chronicle In All The Literature Of The World.

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.

Lawyer: One Who Protects Us Against Robbery By Taking Away The Temptation.

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

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

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

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

The Objection To Puritans Is Not That They Try To Make Us Think As They Do, But That They Try To Make Us Do As They Think.

The Townspeople Are Morons, Yokels, Peasants And Genus Homo Boobiensis...surrounded By Gaping Primates From The Upland Vallies.

The Liberation Of The Human Mind Has Never Been Furthered By Dunderheads; It Has Been Furthered By Gay Fellows Who Heaved Dead Cats Into Sanctuaries And Then Went Roistering Down The Highways Of The World, Proving To All Men That Doubt, After All, Was Safe - That The God In The Sanctuary Was Finite In His Power And Hence A Fraud. One Horse-laugh Is Worth Ten Thousand Syllogisms. It Is Not Only More Effective; It Is Also Vastly More Intelligent.

There Has Been No Organized Effort To Keep Government Down Since Jefferson's Day. Ever Since Then The American People Have Been Bolstering Up Its Powers And Giving It More And More Jurisdiction Over Their Affairs. They Pay For That Folly In Increased Taxes And Diminished Liberties.

The Essence Of Self-fulfillment And Autonomous Culture Is An Unshakable Egotism.

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.

I Believe That It Is Better To Tell The Truth Than To Lie. I Believe That It Is Better To Be Free Than To Be A Slave. And I Believe That It Is Better To Know Than Be Ignorant.

Immorality: The Morality Of Those Who Are Having A Better Time.

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.

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

The Americans Are The Illegitimate Children Of The English.

Illegitimate Child

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

The Taboos That I Have Mentioned Are Extraordinarily Harsh And Numerous. They Stand Around Nearly Every Subject That Is Genuinely Important To Man: They Hedge In Free Opinion And Experimentation On All Sides. Consider, For Example, The Matter Of Religion. It Is Debated Freely And Furiously In Almost Every Country In The World Save The United States, But Here The Critic Is Silenced. The Result Is That All Religions Are Equally Safeguarded Against Criticism, And That All Of Them Lose Vitality. We Protect The Status Quo, And So Make Steady War Upon Revision And Improvement.

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.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man.

The Extortions And Oppressions Of Government Will Go On So Long As Such Bare Fraudulence Deceives And Disarms The Victims; So Long As They Are Ready To Swallow The Immemorial Official Theory That Protesting Against The Stealings Of The Archbishop's Secretary's Nephew's Mistress' Illegitimate Son Is A Sin Against The Holy Ghost.

The Chief Difference Between Free Capitalism And State Socialism Seems To Be This: That Under The Former A Man Pursues His Own Advantage Openly, Frankly And Honestly, Whereas Under The Latter He Does So Hypocritically And Under False Pretenses.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

One Does Not Arise From Such A Book As Sister Carrie With A Smirk Of Satisfaction; One Leaves It Infinitely Touched.

The First Kiss Is Stolen By The Man; The Last Is Begged By The Woman.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Government Is Actually The Worst Failure Of Civilized Man.

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

There Are Two Impossibilities In Life: "just One Drink" And "an Honest Politician."

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.

If I Had My Way, Any Man Guilty Of Golf Would Be Ineligible For Any Office Of Trust In The United States.

Historian: An Unsuccessful Novelist.

One Of The Most Mawkish Of Human Delusions Is The Notion That Friendship Should Be Eternal, Or, At All Events, Life-long, And That Any Act Which Puts A Term To It Is Somehow Discreditable.

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

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

It Is Hell, Of Course, That Makes Priests Powerful, Not Heaven, For After Thousands Of Years Of So-called Civilization Fear Remains The One Common Denominator Of Mankind

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

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

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

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

No Healthy Man, In His Secret Heart, Is Content With His Destiny. He Is Tortured By Dreams And Images As A Child Is Tortured By The Thought Of A State Of Existence In Which It Would Live In A Candy Store And Have Two Stomachs.

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.

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

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.

A Man Always Remembers His First Love With Special Tenderness, But After That He Begins To Bunch Them.

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.

The Most Costly Of All Follies Is To Believe Passionately In The Palpably Not True. It Is The Chief Occupation Of Mankind.

It Is Not Materialism That Is The Chief Curse Of The World, As Pastors Teach, But Idealism. Men Get Into Trouble By Taking Their Visions And Hallucinations Too Seriously.

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?

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.

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.

It Is The Natural Tendency Of The Ignorant To Believe What Is Not True. In Order To Overcome That Tendency It Is Not Sufficient To Exhibit The True; It Is Also Necessary To Expose And Denounce The False.

Never Underestimate The Booberie Of The Booboisie.

Never Underestimate

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

Anyhow, The Hole In The Donut Is At Least Digestible.

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

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

As Long As The Southern Colleges Have Revivals On Their Campuses And Students Get Converted To Methodism And Join The Ymca And Are Accepted As Gentlemen, It Will Be Impossible To Think Of The South As Civilized...the Educated Folk Of The Old South Took Theology Lightly, And Religion To Them Was Hardly More Than A Charming Ritual, Useful On Solemn Occassions.

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

It Costs More To Maintain Ten Vices Than One Virtue.

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.

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.

Our Whole Practical Government Is Grounded In Mob Psychology And The Boobus Americanus Will Follow Any Command That Promises To Make Him Safer.

[referring To Fdr] If He Became Convinced Tomorrow That Coming Out For Cannibalism Would Get Him The Votes He Needs So Sorely, He Would Begin Fattening A Missionary In The White House Yard Come Wednesday.

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

The True Aim Of Medicine Is Not To Make Men Virtuous; It Is To Safeguard And Rescue Them From The Consequences Of Their Vices. The Physician Does Not Preach Repentance; He Offers Absolution.

Opera In English Is, In The Main, Just About As Sensible As Baseball In Italian.

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.

I Never Smoked A Cigarette Until I Was Nine.

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.

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.

Capitalism Undoubtedly Has Certain Boils And Blotches Upon It, But Has It As Many As Government? Has It As Many As Marriage? Has It As Many As Religion? I Doubt It. It Is The Only Basic Institution Of Modern Man That Shows Any Genuine Health And Vigor.

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

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.

Evil Is That Which One Believes Of Others.

The Truth Is That Christian Theology, Like Every Other Theology, Is Not Only Opposed To The Scientific Spirit; It Is Also Opposed To All Other Attempts At Rational Thinking.

The Martini: The Only American Invention As Perfect As The Sonnet.

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.

There Is, It Appears, A Conspiracy Of Scientists Afoot. Their Purpose Is To Break Down Religion, Propagate Immorality, And So Reduce Mankind To The Level Of Brutes. They Are The Sworn And Sinister Agents Of Beelzebub, Who Yearns To Conquer The World, And Has His Eye Especially Upon Tennessee.]

Conquer The World

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

I Believe There Is A Limit Beyond Which Free Speech Cannot Go, But It's A Limit That's Very Seldom Mentioned. It's The Point Where Free Speech Begins To Collide With The Right To Privacy. I Don't Think There Are Any Other Conditions To Free Speech. I've Got A Right To Say And Believe Anything I Please, But I Haven't Got A Right To Press It On Anybody Else. .... Nobody's Got A Right To Be A Nuisance To His Neighbors.

Temptation Is An Irresistible Force At Work On A Movable Body.

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

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.

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

Democracy Is Also A Form Of Worship. It Is The Worship Of Jackals By Jackasses.

Democracies Have

Los Angeles: Nineteen Suburbs In Search Of A Metropolis.

To Be In Love Is Merely To Be In A State Of Perceptual Anesthesia - To Mistake An Ordinary Young Woman For A Goddess.

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.

Kipling, The Grandson Of A Methodist Preacher, Reveals The Tin-pot Evangelist With Increasing Clarity As Youth And Its Ribaldries Pass Away And He Falls Back Upon His Fundamentals.

No Married Woman Ever Trusts Her Husband Absolutely, Nor Does She Ever Act As If She Did Trust Him. Her Utmost Confidence Is As Wary As An American Pickpocket's Confidence That The Policeman On The Beat Will Stay Bought.

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

Lying Is Not Only Excusable; It Is Not Only Innocent; It Is, Above All, Necessary And Unavoidable. Without The Ameliorations That It Offers, Life Would Become A Mere Syllogism And Hence Too Metallic To Be Borne.

The 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.

I Have Long Been Convinced That The Idea Of Liberty Is Abhorrent To Most Human Beings. What They Want Is Security, Not Freedom. Thus It Seldom Causes Any Public Indignation When An Enterprising Tyrant Claps Down On One Of His Enemies. To Most Men It Seems A Natural Proceeding.

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

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

Democracies Have

A Dull, Dark, Depressing Day In Winter: The Whole World Looks Like A Methodist Church At Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.

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

Adultery Is The Application Of Democracy To Love.

Great Artists Are Modest Almost As Seldom As They Are Faithful To Their Wives.

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

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

The Art Of Writing, Like The Art Of Love, Runs All The Way From A Kind Of Routine Hard To Distinguish From Piling Bricks To A Kind Of Frenzy Closely Related To Delirium Tremens.

The Fact That I Have No Remedy For All The Sorrows Of The World Is No Reason For My Accepting Yours. It Simply Supports The Strong Probability That Yours Is A Fake.

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

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

Great Achievement

It Is The Classic Fallacy Of Our Time That A Moron Run Through A University And Decorated With A Ph.d. Will Thereby Cease To Be A Moron.

There Are No Ugly Cigars, Only Ugly Smokers.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The True Bureaucrat Is A Man Of Really Remarkable Talents. He Writes A Kind Of English That Is Unknown Elsewhere In The World, And An Almost Infinite Capacity For Forming Complicated And Unworkable Rules.

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

There Are No Dull Subjects. There Are Only Dull Writers.

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

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

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.

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.

Puccini - Silver Macaroni, Exquisitely Tangled.

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

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

The Only Way That A Government Can Provide For Jobs For All Citizens Is By Deciding What Every Man Should Do.

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

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.

The Harsh, Useful Things Of The World, From Pulling Teeth To Digging Potatoes, Are Best Done By Men Who Are As Starkly Sober As So Many Convicts In The Death-house, But The Lovely And Useless Things, The Charming And Exhilarating Things, Are Best Done By Men With, As The Phrase Is, A Few Sheets In The Wind.

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.

Courtroom : A Place Where Jesus Christ And Judas Iscariot Would Be Equals, With The Betting Odds Favoring Judas.

To Denounce Moralizing Out Of Hand Is To Pronounce A Moral Judgment.

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

School Teachers, Taking Them By And Large, Are Probably The Most Ignorant And Stupid Class Of Men In The Whole Group Of Mental Workers.

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

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

When A Woman Says She Won't, It's A Good Sign That She Will. And When She Says She Will, It Is An Even Better Sign.

Life Is A Dead-end Street.

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.

For Me To Go Into Politics Would Be Like Sending A Virgin Into A House Of Ill-repute.

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