Great Throughts Treasury

"An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man."

"An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. ~ Henry Louis Mencken"

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

"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."

"Anti-vivisectionist: One who gags at a guinea-pig and swallows a baby."

"Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a Messiah with a bloody nose."

"Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once."

"Anyhow, the hole in the doughnut is at least digestible."

"Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ."

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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."

"As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth."

"As I look back over a misspent life, I find myself more and more convinced that I had more fun doing news reporting than in any other enterprise. It is really the life of kings."

"As I stoop to lace my shoe you clout me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya lacinosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will."

"As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft."

"Ask the average American what is the salient passion in his emotional armamentarium?what is the idea that lies at the bottom of all his other ideas?and it is very probable that, nine times out of ten, he will nominate his hot and unquenchable rage for liberty. He regards himself, indeed, as the chief exponent of liberty in the whole world, and all its other advocates as no more than his followers, half timorous and half envious. To question his ardor is to insult him as grievously as if one questioned the honor of the republic or the chastity of his wife. And yet it must be plain to any dispassionate observer that this ardor, in the course of a century and a half, has lost a large part of its old burning reality and descended to the estate of a mere phosphorescent superstition."

"At the altar ? The bride: "At last! At last!" The bridegroom: "Too late! Too late!""

"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 judgment 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."

"Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives."

"Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they be married, too."

"Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it."

"Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the past, and one must study very carefully the technic of the chief current professionals."

"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 overborne by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."

"Believed in heroes and Nietzsche, in his youth, he was a hero worshiper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after que the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a very prosaic Wagner of flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and the bit crunched underfoot."

"Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind."

"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."

"Chorus of Socialists: "To hell with capital!" Antiphon of anti-Socialists: "To hell with 'Das Kapital'!""

"Christendom may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if a man stands up in public and swears with any show of earnestness that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh."

"Christian - One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife."

"Christian Science and the Coroner: The initiative and referendum."

"Christian Science: The theory that, since the skyrockets following a wallop in the eye are optical delusions, the wallop itself is a delusion and the eye another."

"Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury."

"Class consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite--the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich... another is the doctrine that a moron"

"Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven."

"College football 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 of humanity."

"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies."

"Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons."

"Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends."

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking."

"Courtroom: A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas."

"Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh."

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

"Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

"Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas."

"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."

"Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 60 million native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Coolidge to be head of the state. It is as if a hungry man set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies."

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

"Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."