Great Throughts Treasury

"Hymn of Hate, with Coda: If I hate any class of man in this world, it is evangelical Christians, with their bellicose stupidity, their childish belief in devils, their barbarous hoofing of all beauty, dignity, and decency. But even evangelical Christians I do not hate when I see their wives."

"I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves."

"I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes."

"I am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose. This is incomprehensible to many men, and they seek to remedy the defect by crediting me with purposes of their own. The only thing I respect is intellectual honesty, of which, of course, intellectual courage is a necessary part. A Socialist who goes to jail for his opinions seems to me a much finer man than the judge who sends him there, though I disagree with all the ideas of the Socialist and agree with some of those of the judge. But though he is fine, the Socialist is nevertheless foolish, for he suffers for what is untrue. If I knew what was true, I'd probably be willing to sweat and strive for it, and maybe even to die for it to the tune of bugle-blasts. But so far I have not found it."

"I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom? and the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men."

"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone."

"I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run."

"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."

"I believe in the reality of progress."

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

"I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms."

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."

"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air?that progress made under the shadow of the policeman?s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave? In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen? I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law."

"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."

"I believe that nothing is unconditionally true, and hence I am opposed to every statement of positive truth and to every man who states it. Such men seem to me to be idiots or scoundrels."

"I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect."

"I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing."

"I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries."

"I do not believe in education, and am glad I never went to a university. Beyond the rudiments, it is impossible to teach anything. All the rest the student acquires himself. His teacher merely makes it difficult for him. I never learned anything in school."

"I do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and the gendarmerie make it out. The physical sensation, far from being pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable?the suspension of respiration, indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation?and the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those windows of the soul, synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog and walking on stilts."

"I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs."

"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense."

"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."

"I have seen something of the horrors of war, and much too much of the worse horrors of peace."

"I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success."

"I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey."

"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."

"I read the other day a book defending the Ten Commandments. The best of all arguments for them, however, was omitted. It is that there are not forty of them."

"I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk."

"I, but the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. 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."

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."

"If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself."

"If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine."

"If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States."

"If it were advertised that a troupe of men of easy virtue were to appear half-clothed upon a public stage, exposing their chests, thighs, arms and calves, the only women who would go to the entertainment would be a few delayed adolescents, a psychopathic old maid or two, and a guard of indignant members of the parish Ladies Aid."

"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. All animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers."

"If the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation."

"If Wall Street really wants to dispose of John L. Lewis, let it invite him to a swell feed, hand him a fifty-cent cigar with a torpedo in it, and so burn off his eyebrows."

"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."

"If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish."

"If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x X y is less than y."

"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."

"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable."

"Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average of farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral."

"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time."

"Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead."

"In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue."

"In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don?t know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything."

"In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell."

"In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is."