“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”Tagged: Truth, fiction
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”Tagged: Democracy
“...Americans always want to do what everyone else is doing. If we could spread the impression that the book is a success, it might really become one.”Tagged: Strangers, Public Relations
“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.”Tagged: History Quotes
“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”Tagged: Tragedy, bore, Painful
“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”Tagged: Conscience, Inner Voice, voyeur, Paranoia
“All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then…”Tagged: Government, Authority, danger, Superstition, Taboo
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.”Tagged: Democracy, Inmates Running the Asylum
“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”Tagged: Secrets, Unknowable
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”Tagged: Government, Ideas, Idiotic
“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…”Tagged: Religion, Pragmatism, Santa Claus
“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.”Tagged: Democracy, Two-Party System
“We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”Tagged: Religion, Respect, Politeness
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.”Tagged: Power, Messiah Complex, Savior Complex
“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.”Tagged: Politics, hobgoblins, Moral Panic
“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…”Tagged: civilization, Maudlin, Hysterical , Democracy
“One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. …[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency.…”Tagged: irrational, Modern Society, dubious, theologians