Satirists from the United States

"I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever."

"I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."

"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

"He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."

"I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done him."

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4000 critics."

"He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty."

"Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city."

"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."

"Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic."

"Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."

"It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is—they are so morally blind—and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that."

"Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel."

"This poor little one-horse town."

"It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people–who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations–do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies."... "That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."

"A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother."

"The funniest things are the forbidden."

"We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground."

"Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?"

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will."

"He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it."

"I was convinced that Lake Como was a large basin of water similar to the Tahoe, also surrounded by immense mountains whose slopes reach the shores, but here the lake is not a basin, since the banks are articulated like those of a stream and is a quarter or two thirds wide of the Mississippi. Along the coast there is not a single strip of flat land, but endless chains of mountains which suddenly emerge from the lake surface and rise towards the sky for one hundred or two hundred feet, constantly varying in shape. The rocky ridges are covered with numerous plant species and dotted with white villas that peek through lush foliage. Even on the top of the promontory we saw pretty little houses perched on picturesque pinnacles, more than a thousand feet above our heads."

"An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar."

"It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property."

"As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious."

"A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle."

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure."

"The kingly office is entitled to no respect; it was originally procured by the highwayman’s methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is not more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate. A monarch, (whether good or bad), when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday school between crimes; when bad, (or a nullity) he is entleed [sic] to none at all."

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."

"The other night the view appeared even more surprising and picturesque. On the other side (of Lake Como) cliffs, trees and very white houses reflected their perfectly clear images on the lake and long beams of light, coming from distant windows, marked the motionless surface. Immediately next to it, great silver mansions under the moon shone among a thick dark and shapeless foliage, among the shadows that fell from the top of the cliffs and touched the lake edge where every stretch of the magical vision was reflected several times and with precision."

"Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

"James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration."

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

"[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?"

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place."

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

"I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction."

"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself."

"He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person."

"There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory."

"I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire."

"It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

"Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation."

"The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at."

"Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand."

"Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no."

"...[H]eaven for climate, Hell for society."

"Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it."

"Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state."

"The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it -- they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization."

"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."

"To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology."

"Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men — but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."

"Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno."

"Belgium's royal palace is still what it has been for the last 14 years: a lair of a wild beast that for its money every year mutilates, murders and starves a half million helpless natives in the Congo Free State."

"To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself! ..."Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." [Czar Nicholas II]"

"He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man — and I am the other one. Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest."

"A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt."

"Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden."

"Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."

""In God We Trust." Now then, after that legend had remained there forty years or so, unchallenged and doing no harm to anybody, the President suddenly "threw a fit" the other day, as the popular expression goes, and ordered that remark to be removed from our coinage. Mr. Carnegie granted that the matter was not of consequence, that a coin had just exactly the same value without the legend as with it, and he said he had no fault to find with Mr. Roosevelt's action but only with his expressed reasons for the act. The President had ordered the suppression of that motto because a coin carried the name of God into improper places, and this was a profanation of the Holy Name. Carnegie said the name of God is used to being carried into improper places everywhere and all the time, and that he thought the President's reasoning rather weak and poor. I thought the same, and said, "But that is just like the President. If you will notice, he is very much in the habit of furnishing a poor reason for his acts while there is an excellent reason staring him in the face, which he overlooks. There was a good reason for removing that motto; there was, indeed, an unassailably good reason — in the fact that the motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar–mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease. Take an instance: the removal of the motto fetched out a clamor from the pulpit; little groups and small conventions of clergymen gathered themselves together all over the country, and one of these little groups, consisting of twenty-two ministers, put up a prodigious assertion unbacked by any quoted statistics and passed it unanimously in the form of a resolution: the assertion, to wit, that this is a Christian country. Why, Carnegie, so is hell. Those clergymen know that, inasmuch as "Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few — few — are they that enter in thereat" has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don't brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate."

"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough."

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."

"When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself."

"Adam's temperament was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament — which he did not create and had no authority over."

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."

"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

"Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more."

"Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years."

"A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use."

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare."

"It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible."

"Jesus died to save men — a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?"

"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."

"I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat."

"Adam, at Eve's grave: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden."

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

"An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth—a fact that is recognized by the law of libel."

"The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying."

"Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight."

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."

"They spell it "Vinci" and pronounce it "Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce."

"I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo — that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast — for luncheon — for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a change, occasionally."

"Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!"

"Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke."

"I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell."

"Virtue never has been as respectable as money."

"The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

"The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me."

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason."

"The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock-Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc."

"A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty."

"No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America."

"Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden."

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."

"Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

"The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving."

"There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing."

"To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."

"She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for — well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."

"There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours."

"Probable nor'east to sou'west winds, varying to the soutard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning."

"One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it."

"A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years."

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."

"You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use."

"Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:"

"In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has."

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR."

"There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

"Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches."

"There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different."

"To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin."

"H'aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"

"I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll go to hell.""

"I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before."

"There isn't time--so brief is life--for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving--and but an instant, so to speak, for that."

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."

"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it."

"To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct."

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

"Prosperity is the best protector of principle."

"Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size."

"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

"I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English, it is un-American; it is French."

"The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears ..."

"A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle."

"These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship."

"The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them... He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it."

"In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii...the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny...then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves...and it was a disaster so crushing that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day... Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion."

"I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark made by one of the Latin historians. Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error, they being 'mistaken for Jews.' The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians, but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates Christianity and was not born of Christianity?"

"In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him."

"I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the questionable sort."

"Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent..."

"In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. The cost to him has been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy..."

"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"

"Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization-tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade-Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?"

"Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked -- but not enough, in my judgement, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to be too scarce -- too scarce and too shy. And such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for the game. The most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been injudicious."

"The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it -- they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. More -- they have begun to examine them. This is not well. The Blessings of Civilization are all right, and a good commercial property; there could not be a better, in a dim light. In the right kind of a light, and at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness: LOVE, LAW AND ORDER, JUSTICE, LIBERTY, GENTLENESS, EQUALITY, CHRISTIANITY, HONORABLE DEALING, PROTECTION TO THE WEAK, MERCY, TEMPERANCE, EDUCATION, -- and so on."

"There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring into camp any idiot that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate it. It is proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for Export -- apparently. Apparently. Privately and confidentially, it is nothing of the kind. Privately and confidentially, it is merely an outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption, while inside the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That Actual Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only for Export. Is there a difference between the two brands? In some of the details, yes."

"I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it."

"The best of us would rather be popular than right."

": The manuscript from which this was taken was written and edited from 1902 to 1908. See: Mark Twain Project, Ed., No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug (University of California Press, 1982), p. 26."

":Often reported as:"

"As an active privilege, [free speech] ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always."

"An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he carries, and keeps to himself."

"[W]e consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor's pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound."

"He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it."

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."

"It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval."

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

"But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

"Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel -- and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy and I heard repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country."

"This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars."

"No one doubts—certainly not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective."

"When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself."

"Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others."

"Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now."

"When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic — for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."

"The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the force—the half which invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one of these—very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing-power that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I think it is not so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the actual power is lodged exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or Tom, it is all one—his services are necessary, and he is entitled to such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the Engineer; he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the whole work."

"Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.""

"From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:...After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new."

"When Adam ate the apple in the Garden and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the Art, too, by watching Adam. It was cunning of them, it was neat; for they got all that was worth having out of the apple without tasting it and afflicting themselves with the disastrous Moral Sense, the parent of all the immoralities."

"The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life."

"Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it."

"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one — on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful — as usual — will shout for the war. The pulpit will — warily and cautiously — object — at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation — pulpit and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

"Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

"A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!"

"There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought — a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities."

"The bicycle had what is called the 'wabbles', and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against nature, but not against the laws of nature."

"Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time."

"The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;"

"There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life's "experiences"—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never know one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side."

"Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any."

"I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them—that is nothing but a phrase—they come to you."

"I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along."

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."

"We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all."

"During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. ... There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain."

"Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes."

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country."

"God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

"France has usually been governed by prostitutes."

"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."

"Familiarity breeds contempt — and children."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."

"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."

"Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved."

"Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest—you want them all to land in hell together, and right away."

"Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion."

"None but the dead have free speech."

"What is the difference between a taxidermist & a tax-collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin."

"Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite — but they all worship money."

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."

"Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired."

"Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

"Geological time is not money. A pity too; for it would have abolished poverty from the earth. Let us adopt geological time, then time being money, — there will be no more poverty. We are all missionaries (propagandists of our views). Each of us disapproves of the other missionaries; in fact detests them, as a rule. I am one of the herd myself. It is noticeable that the professional always uses the one license: "Go ye into all the world," and ignores the Golden Rule which would restrain him from entering China and one or two other countries where he is not wanted and is not welcome."

"Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain)."

""In God We Trust." It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well — In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true — half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it."

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot"

"Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object — robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick — a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation? For in a republic, who is "the Country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is "the country?" Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn't."

"In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country — hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of. Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time. This Republic's life is not in peril. The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pirate hands."

"The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal."

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

"Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

"But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?"

"Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

"It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled."

"The lack of money is the root of all evil."

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog."

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

"When a child turns 12, he should be kept in a barrel and fed through the bunghole, until he reaches 16 ... at which time you plug the bunghole."

"Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, "It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time.""

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"Warm summer sun, shine kindly here; Warm southern wind, blow softly here; Green sod above, lie light, lie light — Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night."

"The minority is always in the right. The majority is always in the wrong."

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

"Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over."

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

"Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India."

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."

"For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld."

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

"Don't believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

"Politicians are like diapers: they should be changed often, and for the same reason*"

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

"When the rich rob the poor, it's called business. When the poor fight back, it's called violence."

"The ancients stole all our great ideas."

"A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch."

"History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes"

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

"No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired … more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe."

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

"of course if Mark Twain had a little more courage Nigger Jim would have been more of the father figure that he obviously is, instead of a sort of Mammy figure that is part of the other tradition Twain has to deal with."

"[A] hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven 'sure fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy."

"If the writer is trying to interpret the meaning of life, all of what he writes is autobiographical. Think of Mark Twain, for example. You can tell from Twain's autobiography that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are versions, or imagined stages, of Twain himself. He was writing about his own life, about how it was or could have been. And he's still trying to reinterpret his life or to translate it when he is writing his autobiography, only he is not doing it with a mask anymore, rather as a testimony."

"He [Mark Twain] spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes."

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

"From his earliest childhood young Clemens had been of an adventurous disposition. Before he was thirteen he had been extracted three times from the Mississippi and six times from Bear Creek in a substantially drowned condition, but his mother, with the high confidence in his future that never deserted her, merely remarked: "People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water.""

"There is only one known video of Mark Twain,/wearing a white linen suit in 1909,/walking outside a house in Connecticut,/talking with Thomas Edison."

"I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire."

"Like Mark Twain, Eugene Field was an ardent dissenter against the prevailing social order in private conversation, although not much of that dissent was found in his writings-nor in Twain's. Both of those men were born too soon, or perhaps were just naturally cautious of being combative in public. They were cast by Fate into a period which we know today as the era of rugged individualism-a nation marching behind a banner bearing the legend: "Self conquers all!" Meaning, of course, that it's up to you alone-a doctrine which practically everybody across the land took for granted, and one which hangs on in spite of its falsity. Yet Field and Twain occasionally exhibited signs of doubt and wrote satirical comment on American life. Field poked fun at the shallow culture of the Chicago pork packers, and Mark Twain indulged in brief outbursts of anarchistic protest. None of their onsets, however, was incisive enough to make the big financiers question their loyalty to the existing economic and social system."

"Mark Twain is a heroic figure in literature, and everybody who studies American literature or American history knows about Mark Twain as a great novelist. But how many people are taught in our schools or in our books that Mark Twain was a leader of the Anti-Imperialist League at the turn of the century? That he spoke out against the invasion of the Philippines?"

"Iran and Iraq have been at war for five years now. The traditional present for a fifth anniversary is wood. Here's a gift suggestion: a big stick to beat some goddamned sense into their heads."

"Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet Union."

"Marijuana is […] self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?"

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."

"Marxism has tremendous appeal in the Third World for exactly the same reason it had tremendous appeal to me in college. It gives you something to believe in when what surrounds you seems unbelievable. It gives you someone to blame besides yourself. It's theoretically tidy. And, best of all, it's fully imaginary so it can never be disproved."

"No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works."

"Why can't everybody just get along? No reasonably detached person goes to Israel without being reduced in philosophical discourse to the level of Rodney King—or, for that matter, to the level of George Santayana. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Santayana said, in one of those moments of fatuousness that come to even the most detached of philosophers. It goes double for those who can't remember anything else. And they do get along, after their fashion. Muslims and Christians and Jews have lived together in the Holy Land for centuries—hating one another's guts, cutting one another's throats, and touching off wars of various magnitudes. The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots."

"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

"I am a little to the right of ... Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican."

"Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, contains ten chapters of fulminations convincing the convinced. However, Moore does include one chapter on how to argue with a conservative. As if. Approached by someone like Michael Moore, a conservative would drop a quarter in Moore's Starbucks cup and hurriedly walk away."

"There are two organizations pushing for change in November — al Qaeda and the Democratic party. And they both have the same message: 'We're going to fix you, America.' On the whole, the terrorists have a more straightforward plan for fixing things. They're going to blow themselves up. Although, come to think of it, Howard Dean did that."

"No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, 'Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim.' And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no . . ."

"Saddam Hussein was reduced to the Unabomber — Ted Kaczynski — a nutcase hiding in the sticks. Sure, the terrorism by his supporters is frightening. Hence, its name, 'terrorism.' Killing innocent people by surprise is not called 'a thousand points of light.' But, as frightening as terrorism is, it's the weapon of losers. The minute somebody sets off a suicide bomb, you can be sure that person doesn't have 'career prospects.' And no matter how horrendous a terrorist attack is, it's still conducted by losers. Winners don't need to hijack airplanes. Winners have an Air Force."

"And then there is the Tenth Commandment. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.' The Ten Commandments are God's basic rules about how we should live — a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is 'Don't envy your buddy's cow.' How did that make the top ten? What's it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door? Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have — go get your own. The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell."

"Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley!"

"The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the 'high school sex promise': I'll pull out in time, honest!"

"The number of American presidential candidates varies with the sunspot cycle and the phases of the moon. Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is 'America's ex-wife.'"

"Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a — no offense — European, then whack."

"She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

"A charity ball is like a dance except it's tax deductible."

"A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat."

"Weird clothing is de rigeur for teenagers, but today's generation of teens is finding it difficult to be sufficiently weird. This is because the previous generation of teens, who went through adolescence in the sixties and seventies, used up practically all the available weirdness."

"A woman should dress to attract attention. To attract the most attention, a woman should either be nude or wearing something as expensive as getting her nude is going to be."

"Nothing makes an awful secret like a secret Negro... Up North, confess your bloodline freely. There's nothing a Northerner likes better than a black person who is completely white. Do not, however, try this trick with real blacks. They could give a shit... (If you travel in very sophisticated circles, you may want to turn Marcus Aurelius into Moses Schmeckle. Racism is very lower-class. Upper-class people are never racists; they're anti-Semites.)"

"Foreigners may pretend otherwise, but if English is spoken loudly enough, anyone can understand it, the British included. Actually, there’s no such thing as a foreign language. The world is just filled with people who grunt and squeak instead of speaking sensibly. French may be an exception. But since it’s impossible to figure out what French people are saying, we’ll never know for sure."

"A good bachelor drinks his dessert (and sometimes the rest of his meals). A sweet tooth is a danger signal that you're getting too much exercise and not enough cocktails."

"A steady job is at least as deleterious to the spirit of bachelorhood as a steady date. Some jobs are worse than actual wives."

"Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, "You're a disgusting, drunken mess." And that's a good description of a party, if it's done right."

"Cleaning, like seduction, should be done from the top down — starting with the ceiling, which is ridiculous. Gravity takes care of that."

"Despite the fact that meat is made from dead animals, it shouldn't smell that way. Try this test for meat freshness: close your eyes and see if you can tell the pork chops from a gym locker."

"Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties."

"For some mysterious Darwinian reason, women feel compelled to straighten up bedrooms before and after sex. Try to make love in every other room of the house."

"Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse."

"Never serve oysters during a month that has no paycheck in it."

"Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks."

"The only really good vegetable is Tabasco sauce. Put Tabasco sauce in everything. Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin."

"The real truth about children is they don't speak the language very well. They're physically uncoordinated. And they are ignorant of our elaborate ideas about right and wrong."

"There's only one secret to bachelor cooking — not caring how it tastes."

"You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen."

"Pain is the body's way of showing us we're bone-heads. A child growing up in an excessively safe environment may never learn that he is one — not until he gets married and has a wife to tell him so."

"Every generation finds the drug it needs."

"Fishing ... is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait."

"Freddie Aguilar, who's billed as "the Bob Dylan of the Philippines." This is unfair, since he's good-looking, plays the guitar well, can carry a tune, and writes songs that make sense."

"I mean, so what if some fifty-eight-year-old butt-head gets a load on and starts playing Death Race 2000 in the rush-hour traffic jam? What kind of chance is he taking? He's just waiting around to see what kind of cancer he gets anyway. But if young, talented you, with all of life's possibilities at your fingertips, you and the future Cheryl Tiegs there, so fresh, so beautiful — if the two of you stake your handsome heads on a single roll of the dice in life's game of stop-the-semi — now that's taking chances! Which is why old people rarely risk their lives. It's not because they're chicken — they just have too much dignity to play for small stakes."

"Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best."

"I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck."

"In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe."

"Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there."

"Jewishness cropped up and has never successfully been put down since."

"Industrialization came to England but has since left."

"Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do."

"Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom," a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions—North and South, black and white, labor and management—but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections."

"The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy— a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind."

"The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the Village Voice for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America's rural areas."

"The real slums are another matter. The bad parts of Tondo are as bad as any place I've seen, ancient, filthy houses swarmed with the poor and stinking of sewage and trash. But there are worse parts— squatter areas where people live under cardboard, in shipping crates, behind tacked-up newspapers. Dad would march you straight to the basement with a hairbrush in his hand if he caught you keeping your hamster cage like this."

"The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say."

"These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper."

"To really enjoy drugs you've got to want to get out of where you are. But there are some wheres that are harder to get out of than others. This is the drug-taking problem for adults. Teenage weltschmerz is easy to escape. But what drug will get a grown-up out of, for instance, debt?"

"Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof."

"Cockfighting has always been my idea of a great sport— two armed entrées battling to see who'll be dinner."

"Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college."

"Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren't on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it's how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college."

"Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry."

"I am no stranger to loud noise. I've been to a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert. I once dated a woman with two kids."

"I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners— two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime."

"I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books."

"I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with."

"If Christ came back tomorrow, He'd have to change planes in Frankfurt. Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges."

"In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailing-boat equipment, the gin and tonic."

"Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a double, bartender, please."

"It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation."

"Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians."

"Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with."

"One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes."

"Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun."

"The America's Cup is like driving your Lamborghini to the Grand Prix track to watch the charter buses race."

"The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words."

"The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know."

"The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule."

"The Italians have had two thousand years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place."

"The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'."

"The most extraordinary change in Moscow was Arbat Street, the USSR's first pedestrian mall. Of course, there's something a little sad about a pedestrian mall in a nation where few people own cars— the whole damn country's a pedestrian mall."

"There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily."

"There are probably more fact-finding tours of Nicaragua right now than there are facts— the country has shortages of practically everything."

"They don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, "the Irish of Asia"."

"To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze."

"War will exist as long as there's a food chain."

"What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road."

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

"There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States."

"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop."

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it."

"Marilyn Quayle was there, too, looking – it was indeed a strange week in Washington – great. She had her hair done up in something my wife said was a chignon, and whatever it was, it made Marilyn look considerably less like a Cape buffalo than usual. Though actually I admired the Cape buffalo look. I have an idea that – like a Cape buffalo – if Marilyn Quayle gets furious and charges, you've got only one shot at the skull. You wouldn't want to just wound her."

"Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers."

"The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it."

"Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country. So maybe he owes all of us an apology..."

"The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata — a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard."

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

"Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And — since women are a majority of the population — we'd all be married to Mel Gibson."

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

"There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause."

"The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it."

"The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors— psychology, sociology, women's studies— to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view."

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."

"I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal."

"The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."

"You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism."

"You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; if you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography."

"The Third World attitude toward the United States is also easy to understand if you think of it in terms of adolescence. The citizens of the Third World are in a teenage muddle about us--full of envy, imitation, anger and blind puppy love. I have been held at gunpoint by a Shi'ite youth in West Beirut who told me in one breath that America was "pig Satan devil" and that he planned to go to dental school in Dearborn as soon as he got his green card. In Ulundi, in Zululand, I talked to a young man who, as usual, blamed apartheid on the United States. However, he had just visited the U.S. with a church group and also told me, "Everything is so wonderful there. The race relations are so good. And everyone is rich." Just what part of America had he visited, I asked. "The South Side of Chicago," he said."

"This morning Bianca looked...her age. Here we had a not very bright, fortyish, discarded rock-star wife, trapped in the lonely hell of the formerly cute — one bummed-out show-biz lefty. I was feeling great myself, ready to turn somersaults over the Ortega defeat, full of good cheer and pleased with all the world. But then the forlorn, sagging little shape of Bianca caught my eye and, all of a sudden, I felt EVEN BETTER."

"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle."

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."

"There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business."

"Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money — hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

"And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?"

"You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal."

"Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have."

"Term limits aren't enough. We need jail."

"Things are better now than things have been since men began keeping track of things. Things are better than they were only a few years ago. Things are better, in fact, than they were at 9:30 this morning, thanks to Tylenol and two Bloody Marys. But that's personal and history is general. It's always possible to come down with the mumps on V-J Day or to have, right in the middle of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a piece of it fall on your foot. In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: 'dentistry.'"

"A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death."

"A pleasant natural environment is a good — a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force."

"A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty — their power and privilege — to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians"

"We were served an excellent dinner. And the next thing I know I was on my third bottle of wine expressing my disagreement with a dean over her support for the Clinton administration health-care reform plan by yelling that she was a political criminal. "Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind, goddamnit!""

"Any person who has spent time outdoors actually doing something, such as hunting and fishing as opposed to standing there with a doobie in his mouth, knows nature is not intrinsically healthy."

"All of Vietnam has [beautiful women] and not just singular enchantresses but huge aggregate percentages of sirens and belles. Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett ... I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something."

"Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine."

"Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is."

"Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest."

"Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?"

"Biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?"

"Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press."

"Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding even its main problem? Hong Kong and Singapore both have greater population densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and they're called success stories. The same goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez."

"Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system."

"Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes."

"Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes."

"Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists."

"Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid."

"Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is."

"Human problems are complex. If something isn't complex it doesn't qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about."

"I guess the argument of contextuality is that anything is okay as long as it's done by people who are sufficiently unlike you."

"I suspect the Haitian Ministry of Health's principal contribution to health in Haiti is providing nice, healthy jobs to those Haitians with the connection to get them."

"I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know."

"Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones."

"If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first."

"If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote."

"Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa."

"In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as "public services" because nothing in the country is truly public. Everything is somebody's fief. And every fief must be exploited if the exploiter cares to survive."

"In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter."

"It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last."

"It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song."

""Malthus,", says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, "was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically." Al, as the father of four children, should know."

"Man has been breeding livestock for ten thousand years and has yet to come up with a monstrous sheep that can trample buildings and graze a whole golf course for breakfast."

"Mankind is supposed to have evolved in the treetops. But I have examined my sense of balance, the prehensility of my various appendages, and my attitude toward standing on anything higher than, say, political principles, and I have concluded that, personally, I evolved in the backseat of a car."

"Most of the research about species extinction has been conducted on islands because islands are controlled environments and scientists can get drinks with little umbrellas in them there... Island logic also tells us that an increase in habitat size means an increase in number of species. But it doesn't necessarily. You can build your bed as large as you like and still get very few people to sleep with you."

"Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave."

"On Friday, June 12, 1992, 110 heads of state gathered at Riocentro. They were indistinguishable in dress and deportment. Where was biodiversity when we needed it?"

"One thing that's certain about going outdoors: When you come back inside, you'll be scratching."

"People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs."

"People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important."

"Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet."

"Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty— their power and privilege— to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians."

"Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head."

"Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left from people getting rich."

"Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise."

"Somalia is so bad that making a mess improves the place."

"The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion— very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu."

"The observers had a logbook recording the assaults, bombings, and artillery attacks on the area. Each page was ruled in vertical columns: DATE, TIME, LOCATION, DAMAGE, CASUALTIES. The columns headed ACTION TAKEN BY THE UN were completely empty."

"The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself." In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine."

"The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting."

"There is a fine line in the Third World between half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe and half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe so they can throw you in jail."

"Traffic was like a bad dog. It wasn't important to look both ways when crossing the street; it was important to not show fear."

"Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey."

"Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming."

"War is a great asshole magnet."

"We tried to find the mayor. His secretary said he was at home. His wife said he was at the office. In Italy or France this would mean His Honor was having an affair. In Chabarovice it probably meant he'd run off to be a busboy in Stuttgart."

"When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger."

"When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved."

"When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken."

"Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower.""

"Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby."

"We’re told cars are dangerous. It’s safer to drive through South Central Los Angeles than to walk there. We’re told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We’re told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it’s hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald’s from a speeding train. And we’re told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?"

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head."

"I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit."

"Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking."

"When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... This violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people."

"The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around."

"Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening."

"There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off."

"When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible, he didn't have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence."

"Author's Note"

"Chapter One: The Campaign Begins: Ready, Set, Go to Hell"

"Chapter Two: The Abominable Showman: June 16, 2015"

"Chapter Three: The Horror! The Horror!"

"Chapter Four: A Huck So Unlike Finn: July 26, 2015"

"Chapter 27: I Endorse Hillary Clinton"

"I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?"

"There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn. You see, advice and lovelorn don't go together. Because advice makes love sound like some sort of cognitive activity, but we know that it isn't. We all know that it's some sort of horrible chemical reaction over which we have absolutely no control. And that's why advice doesn't work."

"Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It’s my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they’re apparently also not good enough to be shorter."

"I doubt there’s ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not."

"Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is "Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world." In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened — which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don’t then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that’s good. Or, on the contrary, they don’t bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it’s bad. They just tell you what happened. That’s the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they’re on, I never agree with them."

"Take away a man’s actual sense of manhood — which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children — and you’ve got to give them something else. And they did.This hideous religion that’s all over the country — these huge church-malls — that’s what substitutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That’s just self-righteousness — incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic. People have become so rigid; their opinions seem to them like themselves. When that happens (and it has happened) people can’t change their minds. If you are identified by your opinions — if that is the very basis of yourself — how can you change your mind?"

"The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies — easily checkable, blatant lies — and I’m not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men — 15 of them are Saudis — and five minutes later the whole country thinks they’re from Iraq — how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors."

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive — you are leaking."

"Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries."

"Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke."

"I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility."

"Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep."

"Bread that must be sliced with an ax is bread that is too nourishing."

"Women who insist on having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type."

"Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication."

"If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies."

"Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football."

"Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk."

"Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met."

"The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive."

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."

"Do not elicit your child's political opinions. He doesn't know any more than you do."

"Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams."

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."

"Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens."

"Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth."

"No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation."

"Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you."

"Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come."

"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra."

"Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions."

"I understand, of course, that many people find smoking objectionable. That is their right. I would, I assure you, be the very last to criticize the annoyed. I myself find many-- even most-- things objectionable. Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one's home. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs. In private I avoid such people; in public they have the run of the place. I stay at home as much as possible, and so should they. When it is necessary, however, to go out of the house, they must be prepared, as I am, to deal with the unpleasant personal habits of others. That is what "public" means."

"How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses."

"Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch."

"I borrow to pay my honest debts and not to squander foolishly. What's more, I confine my borrowing to those who can well afford it. I don't go around sponging on widows and orphans unless they have plenty."

"I think you are absolutely right about everything, except I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell."

"I hear so many things about who I am supposed to be I hardly know what to believe. I am willing to tell all, but what Is it? Doubtless all these myths and legends will be straightened out eventually, but It may take years."

"I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart."

"I only know that all is lost, and that nothing can help me unless I inherit money, strike oil or go to work."

"Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live."

"The Modern Man or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men, or too many. The Modern Man's highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is. [Footnote: It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.]"

"[Footnote:]Each male has from 2 to 790 females with whom he discusses current events. Of these he marries from 3 to 17."

"All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people."

"Aristotle described the Crow as chaste. In some departments of knowledge, Aristotle was too innocent for his own good."

"Male penguins are unfaithful up to an advanced age, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to the sea air."

"[Footnote:] The Dotterel weighs only four ounces. It has long been a scientific riddle how so much wrong-headedness can manage to exist in so small a space. Still, there's the Least Gnatcatcher."

"[Footnote:] Other foolish birds include the Semipalmated Plover, the Marbled Godwit, the Carolina Mosshead, the Tasmanian Googlenose and the Fool Hen or Franklin Grouse of the Rockies."

"To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows."

"The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery."

"[Footnote:] Much still remains to be learned about his sex life because the Hummingbird is quicker than the eye."

"[Footnote:] Aristotle maintains that the neck of the Lion is composed of a single bone. Aristotle knew nothing at all about Lions, a circumstance which did not prevent him from writing a good deal on the subject."

"[Footnote:] To give the Beaver his due, he does things because he has to do them, not because he believes that hard work per se will somehow make him a better Beaver -- the Beaver may be dumb, but he is not that dumb! The Beaver was made to gnaw, and gnaw he does. There you have him in a nutshell."

"[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder described a Whale called "Balaena or Whirlpool, which is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground." This brings up again the old question: Are the classics doomed? Our ancestors believed that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a President, or at least a Cabinet Member. It didn't seem to work out that way."

"The Zebra is striped all over so that the Lion can see him and eat him. Some people say he is striped so that the Lion can not see him. These people believe that the stripes of the Zebra simulate the bars of sunlight falling through the tall jungle grasses and that therefore the Zebra is invisible and that the earth is flat."

"The father guards the nest and fans it with his pectoral fins until the children are able to shift for themselves. Then he eats them. [Footnote: He does this because of his altruistic (parental) instinct. The higher one rises in the vertebrate scale the more altruistic one becomes. The higher vertebrates are just one mass of altruism.]"

"Even as a child back in Indiana, whenever I took a Butterbelly off the hook I used to ask myself, "Does this fish think?" I would even ask others, "Do you suppose this Butterbelly can think?" And all I would get in reply was a look. At the age of eighteen, I left the state."

"[Footnote:] The female of any species is generally regarded as a relatively anabolic organism, more passive than the male, who is relatively katabolic and active. The fact remains that one frequently runs across a rather katabolic female."

"[Footnote:] The head of a Pike, served at supper, is said to have caused the death from terror of Theodoric the Goth, who imagined the fish's features to be those of Symmachus, a man he had just killed. But for this story, we of today would have no idea what Symmachus looked like."

"As Darwin puts it in The Descent of Man, "Male snakes, though appearing so sluggish, are amorous." Isn't that just like Darwin? It was one of his main ideas, you know, that the males of almost all animals have stronger passions than the females. Since then we've learned a thing or two. At any rate, the female snake is right there when spring arrives in the woods."

"[Footnote:] We have no Common Vipers in the United States, but we have worse."

"Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]"

"[Footnote:] A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras."

"[Footnote:] Most people erroneously call this snake the Puff Adder, Beach Adder, or Blowing Viper. So, naturally, they kill it."

"If you annoy the Hog-nosed Snake enough, he will roll over on his back and play dead. If you turn him right-side up, he will roll over to prove that he is dead. [Footnote:] While he is playing dead, you can go straight up to him and step on his head or smash him with a big club."

"[Footnote:] The Chameleon's face reminded Aristotle of a Baboon. Aristotle wasn't much of a looker himself."

"[Footnote:] Three million alligators were killed in Florida between 1880 and 1900. Goody!"

"Right here I might offer a word of advice to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, now the rarest bird on the North American continent and one that is going to come in for more and more attention. Keep away from bird lovers, fellows, or you'll be standing on a little wooden pedestal with a label containing your full name in Latin: Campephilus principalis. People will be filing past admiring your glossy blue-black feathers, your white stripes and patches, your nasal plumes in front of lores, your bright red crest and your beady yellow eyes. You'll be in the limelight, but you won't know it. I don't want to alarm you fellows, but there are only about twenty of you alive as I write these lines, but there are more than two hundred of you in American museums and in collections owned by Ivory-billed Woodpecker enthusiasts. Get it?"

"The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. A better day was dawning at the close of the Mesozoic Era. There were some little warm-blooded animals around which had been stealing and eating the eggs of the Dinosaurs, and they were gradually learning to steal other things, too. Civilization was just around the corner."

"During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got. [Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish.]"

"We do not really know why the Woolly Mammoth became extinct. Early Man killed some of them, of course. But most of the time Early Man stayed right in his cave, holding hands with Early Woman. I wouldn't know what the Woolly Mammoth did about that sort of thing. Not nearly enough, I suspect."

"The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for."

"[Footnote:] An Ant on a hot stove-lid runs faster than an Ant on a cold one. Who wouldn't?"

"The Ancient Egyptians considered it good luck to meet a swarm of Bees on the road. What they considered bad luck I couldn't say."

"Then there's the law that any person found carrying a Swanhook, the same being neither a Swanherd in good standing nor accompanied by two certified Swanherds, or Swannerds (or Swanners, or Swanmasters), of known probity, should cough up thirteen shillings fourpence, three shillings fourpence going to the informer and the rest to the King. This looked like a fine bit of legislation until it developed that you can't collect from such people. They haven't got it. That's why they're out stealing Swans."

"[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder perished in 79 A.D. when he refused to flee from the great eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, insisting that everything would be all right. It wasn't."

"Egypt has been called the Gift of the Nile. Once every year the river overflows its banks, depositing a layer of rich alluvial soil on the parched ground. Then it recedes and soon the whole countryside, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with Egyptologists."

"The Egyptians of the First Dynasty were already civilized in most respects. They had hieroglyphics, metal weapons for killing foreigners, numerous government officials, death, and taxes."

"Although this structure [the Great Pyramid of Giza] failed as a tomb, it is one of the wonders of the world even today because it is the largest thing ever built for the wrong reason."

"He [Khufu] had discovered the fact that if you tell somebody to do something, nine times out of ten he will do it."

"[About experts' disbelief that Egyptians could build pyramids] It hardly seems possible that the ancient Egyptians were as smart as these experts. Still, they went right ahead and did it, and you can draw your own conclusions."

"The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down. [Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.]"

"Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon."

"He [Thutmose III] went to Asia with his army and killed the natives to his heart's content, and stole so much of their goods that Egypt was rolling in wealth for quite a while. Thutmose III was thus one of the earliest exponents of internationalism, or going into other countries and slaughtering the inhabitants."

"They [Xanthippus, Aristides the Just, and Themistocles] all won lasting renown by constantly accusing one another of peculation and fraud and calling names at election time."

"[Footnote] Pericles immediately banished his strongest rival, Cimon, who had achieved popularity by bringing the bones of Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, back to Athens from the island of Scyros. As Theseus was a myth, he could hardly have had any bones. Nevertheless, Cimon brought them back."

"Pericles was the people's friend. [Footnote: The very poorest citizens had a chance to become President, but somehow they didn't. It may have been just a coincidence.] He was so fond of the people that he paid them to go to the Assembly and vote, and they were so fond of him that they elected him year after year."

"He [Pericles] reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, a group of feeble old men who held their jobs for life and whose duty it was to declare everything null and void… [Footnote] He also revoked their right to censor the private lives of the citizens. This was nasty of Pericles, for about the only pleasure the old fellows had was catching some citizen doing what he shouldn't. After that, they had to use their imaginations."

"As the average Athenian citizen was not awfully bright, it was necessary to have a great many of them on each jury. … They did not have to prove that they were completely ignorant before they were accepted as jurymen. That was taken for granted."

"Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. (Footnote) He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?"

"He [Philip II] subdued the Greeks after they had knocked themselves out in the Peloponnesian War and appointed himself Captain General so that he could uphold the ideals of Hellas. The main ideal of Hellas was to get rid of Philip, but he didn't count that one."

"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."

"[Footnote] He [Alexander] was often extremely brutal to his captives, whom he sold into slavery, tortured to death, or forced to learn Greek."

"The Romans were stern and dignified, living hard, frugal lives and adhering to the traditional Latin virtues, gravitas, pietas, simplicitas, and adultery."

"[Footnote] Carthage was governed by its rich men and was therefore a plutocracy. Rome was also governed by its rich men and was therefore a republic."

"[Footnote] The Phoenicians employed an alphabet of twenty-one consonants. They left no literature. You can't be literary without a few vowels."

"Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these clubhouse to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn't gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected. The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B.C., and even before that, in Alexander's time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants. Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war."

"Then Hamilcar … was drowned in 228 B.C. while crossing a stream with a herd of elephants."

"Taking elephants across the Alps is not as much fun as it sounds. The Alps are difficult enough when alone, and elephants are peculiarly fitted for not crossing them."

"Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he [Hannibal] would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided."

"[Footnote] Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since."

"Most of the original group [of elephants] succumbed to the climate, and he [Hannibal] was always begging Carthage for more, but the people at home were stingy. They would ask if he thought they were made of elephants and what he had done with the elephants they sent before. Sometimes, when he hadn't an elephant to his name, he would manage to wangle a few from somewhere, a feat which strikes me as his greatest claim to our attention."

"And he [Hannibal] probably believed, up to the very end, that everything might still come out right if he only had a few you-know-whats."

"He [Julius Caesar] stayed in Egypt from early October until late in June settling affairs of state. It was a boy and they called him Caesarion, or Little Caesar, so Cleopatra now regarded herself as practically engaged. Caesar might have married her, but he had a wife at home. There's always something."

"[Footnote] The first of Caesar's three marriages — to Cornelia, a very rich girl — resulted tragically. Sylla, Caesar's enemy, confiscated her dowry soon after the wedding."

"In some respects, Nero was ahead of his time. He boiled his drinking water to remove the impurities and cooled it with unsanitary ice to put them back in. He renamed the month of April after himself, calling it Neroneus, but the idea never caught on because April is not Neroneus and there is no use pretending that it is. During his reign of fourteen years, the outlying provinces are said to have prospered. They were farther away."

"[Footnote] At the age of twelve Nero had shown a lively interest in the arts, particularly music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Why was nothing done about this?"

"Attila was now sixtyish. His mind was weakening and he decided to marry again, as he had been terribly misunderstood the first three hundred times."

"Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now."

"The Franks had all been German at first, but some of them had taken to eating frogs and snails and were gradually turning into Frenchmen, a fact not generally known at the time because there were no French as yet."

"Charlemagne's strong point was morals. He was so moral that some people thought he was only fooling. These people came to no good."

"Whenever he [Charlemagne] decided to help somebody's morals, people would bury their small change and hide in the swamps and forests."

"[on the Borgias' illegitimate births] All children are natural, but some are more so than others and are therefore known as natural children."

"As for Lucrezia, there wasn't even a rumor in her own day that the strawberries at her Wednesday luncheons were dipped in sugar of lead and the other dishes tastefully sprayed with antimony, hellebore, corrosive sublimate, and deadly nightshade, all popular Renaissance flavors."

"She [Lucrezia] also had bright yellow hair, which she washed once a week with a mixture of saffron, box shavings, wood ash, barley straw, madder, cumin seed, and one thing and another to bring out the hidden glints and restore its natural color. You left it on your head for twenty-four hours and washed it off with lye made from cabbage stalks, the only hazard of which was the second-degree burn. If your hair remained on the scalp, you were a blonde."

"Philip [II of Spain] was a great believer in diplomacy, or the art of lying. He fooled some of the people some of the time."

"Other kings let their ministers make their mistakes for them, but Louis insisted on making the important mistakes personally."

"The War of the Spanish Succession lasted thirteen years and would have been wonderful if it hadn't been for the Duke of Marlborough. Things went from bad to worse until just about anybody could defeat the French. On one occasion, Louis's favorite regiment was knocked out by a man named Lumley."

"As you may be aware, Louis XIV built Versailles, a large, drafty place full of Louis Quatorze furniture and Madame de Montespan."

"Thenceforth Jeanne's deeper infatuations always seemed to concern gentlemen of a certain age and standing in the financial world. Older men say such interesting things, and Jeanne was always a good listener. Anything you said was news to her."

"After a while Louis let her [du Barry] draw her own drafts on the comptroller-general. It saved time and bother in a field he much disliked. Jeanne never took more than she needed for urgent current expenses — that is, whatever was in the treasury."

"She was one of the victims of the French Revolution, a thing thought up by some philosophers who wished to make the world a better place to live in. They wanted all the French to be free and equal and happy, and they tried to bring this about by decapitating as many of them as possible."

"Her early years were very unhappy, and she decided she would have a good time if she ever got a chance. Later on, she overdid it a little."

"As Catherine learned later that night [her wedding night], Russia makes strange bedfellows. Peter got into bed with his boots on, played with his collection of dolls for an hour or so, and told the Grand Duchess about his new mistresses. [Footnote: He had no mistresses, really, but he thought he had. It was all in his head.]"

"Catherine announced that he died of hemorrhoidal colic, and people who went to the funeral wondered why, in that case, the large bandage was tied around his neck. And that, gentle reader, is what comes from playing with dolls at the wrong time."

"In 1740 Frederick became King and wrote a book to prove that lying, cheating, and highway robbery are wrong and that true happiness comes only from helping others. He then took Silesia away from Maria Theresa of Austria, who he had promised to protect, and was called Frederick the Great."

"[Footnote] It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there."

"The more snuff Frederick took, the more memoirs he wrote. He loved literature, but not enough to let it alone and stop trying to improve it."

"The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings."

"Henry VIII had so many wives because his dynastic sense was very strong whenever he saw a maid of honor."

"She was the most intelligent woman of her day and she refused to get married in nine languages."

"The colonists, it seems, had to "pay taxes to which their consent had never been asked." [Footnote: Today we pay taxes but our consent has been asked, and we have told the government to go ahead and tax us all they want to. We like it.]"

"He believed you could reach the East by going west. That is true enough, if you don't overdo it. You can reach Long Island City by taking the ferry for Weehawken, but nobody does it on purpose."

"On the fourth voyage, Columbus sailed along the coast of Central America trying to find the mouth of the Ganges River. It wasn't there, somehow."

"Montezuma had a weak and vacillating nature. He never knew what to do next. [Footnote: He had the courage of his convictions, but he had no convictions.]"

"The Aztecs were very sore, because Montezuma had no business giving the national treasury to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanted it. So Montezuma appeared on the roof of the palace and told them that Mexico had definitely turned the corner and everything would be all right from then on if they would just leave it to him. And one of the Aztecs picked up a big rock and hit Montezuma on the head with it, and that was the last of Montezuma II."

"[Footnote] The Mexicans gave the Spaniards malaria, and the Spaniards gave the Mexicans smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and syphilis. The Spaniards believed it was better to give than to receive."

"Tragabigzanda was a rather large girl. Later on, Captain Smith named a portion of Massachusetts after her. [Footnote: This was afterwards changed to Cape Ann, because you really can't have a part of Massachusetts named Tragabigzanda.]"

"Captain Smith reached Virginia on April 26, 1607, with a number of English gentlemen and some people who were willing to work. Then they all held a meeting to discuss ways and means of civilizing everybody. They made a great many speeches and accused each other of various crimes and misdemeanors and arrested some of themselves as an object lesson, and American history was started at last."

"[Footnote] Great men seem to have only one purpose in life — getting into history. That may be all they are good for."

"They [the Pilgrim Fathers] believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did."

"If the Pilgrims were looking for freedom of conscience, they came to just the right place. In America, everybody's conscience is unusually free."

"The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes."

"Armadillos make affectionate pets, if you need affection that much."

"Sartor Resartus is simply unreadable, and for me that always sort of spoils a book."

"If I were king of radio, mighty monarch of the air lanes, I would make Will Cuppy the master of ceremonies on all programs, because he has the nonchalance and grace of the genuine man-about-town. His quips are as fresh as traffic cops and his delivery leaves this corner as happy as a comedian who has just found a sponsor."

"He had the haunted look of the true humorist."

"His style of humor is unique and, like the taste of an avocado, a little hard to describe."

"He was probably the most diligent fact excavator since Gibbon; what he didn't know about a subject, once he had decided to spoof it, wasn't worth knowing."

"It rhymes with complaining."

"Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good." All available evidence, however, points to the contrary."

"Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism. ... It is the Fashion to be a wit. ... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing."

"Nay, 'tis not fitting that we should require Within this World but Raiment, Food and Fire; Powerless Atoms of Eternity Why should we hope to know of Something higher? This Knowledge could but add, not lessen. Woe; The Magian who To-day forms fire with snow Shares with the Sudra in Infinity. We come from Nothing and to Nothing go. So best consent, although with forced grace, Upon this dingy Ball to run our race Untrammeled with the thoughts of higher things, Until we reach the shadowy Stopping place."

"A novel, or indeed any work of art, is not intended to be a literal transcription from Nature. ... Life is a series of false values. There it is always the little things that are greatest. Art attempts to remedy this. It may be defined as an expurgated edition of Nature."

"If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars. And there Raphael shall paint for us scores and scores of his manifestly impossible pictures ... and Shakespeare will lie to us of fabulous islands far past 'the still-vex'd Bermoothes,' and bring us fresh tales from the coast of Bohemia. For no one will speak the truth there, and we shall all be perfectly happy."

"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction."

"I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational."

"The comedy is always the same. In the first act the hero imagines a place where happiness exists. In the second he strives towards that goal. In the third he comes up short or what amounts to the same thing he achieves his goal only to find that happiness lies a little further down the road."

"Yet this Charteris speaks from a perished world, he babbles of a civilization as dead as Babylon's... [In 1918, for example,] Woodrow Wilson was filling, accurately, the former station of William McKinley and of James K. Polk; and in many quarters was being taken quite as seriously as had been his predecessors during their own personally directed wars for moral principles so consistently elevated that they have never yet sunk into human comprehension."

"A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it."

"Tell the rabble my name is Cabell."

"Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour."

"Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over; One thing unshaken stays: Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover; Whereby decays Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal Of hourly change begot, Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not; — Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers Find altered by-and-bye, When, with possession, time anon discovers Trapped dreams must die, — For he that visions God, of mankind gathers One manlike trait alone, And reverently imputes to Him a father's Love for his son."

"The Terrible and Marvellous History of Manuel Pig-Tender That Afterwards Was Named Manuel the Redeemer."

"In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea, And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree: — "Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin; He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within: So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf, Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself.""

"For this is the song of the double-soul, distortedly two in one, — Of the wearied eyes that still behold the fruit ere the seed be sown, And derive affright for the nearing night from the light of the noontide sun. For one that with hope in the morning set forth, and knew never a fear, They have linked with another whom omens bother; and he whispers in one's ear. And one is fain to be climbing where only angels have trod, But is fettered and tied to another's side who fears that it might look odd."

"And one would worship a woman whom all perfections dower, But the other smiles at transparent wiles; and he quotes from Schopenhauer. Thus two by two we wrangle and blunder about the earth, And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods have need of mirth."

"From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled, Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands, — Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart, Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him, Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way."

"Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him; — That is, when they remember he still exists. Who. you ask, is this fellow? — What matter names? He is only a scribbler who is content."

"The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal."

"Some few there must be in every age and every land of whom life claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly of beautiful happenings."

"A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings — where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation — but in his personality."

"Always the fact remains that to the mentally indolent this book may well seem a volume of disconnected short stories. All of us being more or less mentally indolent, this possibility constitutes a dire fault."

"At what cost, now, may one attempt to write perfectly of beautiful happenings?"

"It spurred me to such action as I took, — but it has robbed me of sugared eloquence, it has left me chary of speech. It is necessary that I climb very high because of my love for you, and upon the heights there is silence."

"Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, — and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?"

"Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death always provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever coming true?""

"I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like my little tales. . . . Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must give people what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.""

"I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity."

"The Dream, as I now know, is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatly matter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this."

"Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme, Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?"

"We are talking over telephones, as Shakespeare could not talk; We are riding out in motor-cars where Homer had to walk; And pictures Dante labored on of mediaeval Hell The nearest cinematograph paints quicker, and as well. But ye copy, copy always; — and ye marvel when ye find This new beauty, that new meaning, — while a model stands behind, Waiting, young and fair as ever, till some singer turn and trace Something of the deathless wonder of life lived in any place. Hey, my masters, turn from piddling to the turmoil and the strife! Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life."

"American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison.... Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend to be an unprejudiced judge. The tale seems to me one of those many books which have profited, very dubiously indeed, by having obtained, in one way of another, the repute of being indecent."

"Before 1914 had well begun to make the world safe for hypocrisy, these stories had blended into one continuous and fairly long Comedy of Evasion, called then In the Flesh, but a little later rechristened The Cream of The Jest..."

"This book did not get for me any general recognition. It got for me, instead, something in every way more valuable. For it was The Cream of the Jest which first made for me in the seventeenth year of my writing, a few warm friends who but a little later were to fight in my behalf very nobly, and with wholly heroic tenacity... If few writers have met with more smug, more prurient, or more disingenuous opponents, no writer whatever, I think has found more faithful allies."

"Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance."

"You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff. For I commence at Storisende, in the world's youth, when the fourth Count Emmerick reigned in Poictesme, having not yet blundered into the disfavor of his papal cousin Adrian VII.... With such roundabout gambits alone can some of us approach — as one fancy begets another, if you will — to proud assurance that life is not blind and aimless business; not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that we ourselves may (by and by) be strong and excellent and wise."

"I also begin where he began, and follow wither the dream led him. Meanwhile, I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true."

"Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood."

"You embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick's third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving woman long worshipped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets."

"You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already."

"There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth."

"Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart."

"Dreaming a dream to prize, Is wishing ghosts to rise; And, if I had the spell To call the buried — well, Which one would I?"

"It was not his to choose from what volume or on which page thereof he would read; accident, as it seemed, decided that; but the chance-opened page lay unblurred before him, and he saw it with a clarity denied to other men of his generation."

"With the passage of time, whatever a man had done, whether for good or evil, with the man's bodily organs, left the man's parish unaffected: only a man's thoughts and dreams could outlive him, in any serious sense, and these might survive with perhaps augmenting influence: so that Kennaston had come to think artistic creation in words — since marble and canvas inevitably perished — was the one, possibly, worth-while employment of human life. But here was a crude corporal deed which bluntly destroyed thoughts, and annihilated dreams by wholesale. To Kennaston this seemed the one real tragedy that could be staged on earth...."

"Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...."

""Why is a Kennaston?" he asked himself — thus whimisically voicing a real desire to know if human beings were intended for any especial purpose. Most of us find it more comfortable, upon the whole, to stave off such queries — with a jest, a shrug, or a Scriptural quotation, as best suits personal taste; but Kennaston was "queer" enough to face the situation quite gravely."

"Religion, of course, assured him that the answer to his query was, in various books, explicitly written, in very dissimilar forms. But Kennaston could find little to attract him in any theory of the universe based upon direct revelations from heaven. Conceding that divinity had actually stated so-and-so, from Sinai or Delphi or Mecca, and had been reported without miscomprehension or error, there was no particular reason for presuming that divinity had spoken veraciously: and, indeed all a available analogues went to show that nothing in nature dealt with its inferiors candidly."

"To-day alone was real. Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now — and it was in the insignificance of this moment, precisely, that religious persons must believe. So ran the teachings of all dead and lingering faiths alike. Here was, perhaps, only another instance of mankind's abhorrence of actualities; and man's quaint dislike of facing reality was here disguised as a high moral principle. That was why all art, which strove to make the sensations of a moment soul-satisfying, was dimly felt to be irreligious. For art performed what religion only promised."

"Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow."

"The transfiguring touch was to come, it seemed from a girl's lips; but it had not; he kissed, and life remained uncharmed. ...at the bottom of his heart, he was still expecting the transfiguring touch to come, some day, from something he was to obtain or do, perhaps to-morrow.... Then he had by accident found out the sigil's power..."

"The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. And in consequence, their love-affairs, their maxims, their so-called natural ties and instincts, and above all, their wickedness, became just so many bungling plagiarisms from something they had read, in a novel or a Bible or a poem or a newspaper. People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. Human life was a distorting tarnished mirror held up to literature: this much at least of Wilde's old paradox — that life mimicked art — was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word."

"I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong."

"I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are..."

"The Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, I suspect — windows which face on other worlds than ours: and They permit this-or-that man to peer out fleetingly, perhaps, just for the joke's sake; since always They humorously contrive matters so this man shall never be able to convince his fellows of what he has seen or of the fact that he was granted any peep at all. The Wardens without fail arrange what we call — gravely, too — "some natural explanation.""

"The man was not merely very human; he was humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true."

"Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day."

"It is true I have not told you everything. Why should I? No Author ever does.... With Felix Kennaston — or, if you prefer it so, with Horvendile, — rests safe this secret and peculiar knowledge as to how the life of Manuel may yet repair to its first home after some seven centuries of exile. Thus will the traveller return — by and by — to the place of his starting; the legend of the second coming of the Redeemer will be justified, in, at all events, my lesser world; and the tale to Manuel's life will have come again, as it did once beside the pool of Haranton, full circle."

"If the Author will it, there may be appended to any comedy an afterpiece. Meanwhile, so far as I may judge, the life of Manuel ends here."

"James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettarre stays inaccessible always and her lovliness is his to look on only in his dreams. All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion."

"Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger."

"Jurgen returned again toward Barathum; and, whether or not it was a coincidence, Jurgen met precisely the vampire of whom he had inveigled his father into thinking. She was the most seductively beautiful creature that it would be possible for Jurgen's father or any other man to imagine: and her clothes were orange-colored, for a reason sufficiently well known in Hell, and were embroidered everywhere with green fig–leaves. "A good morning to you, madame," says Jurgen, "and whither are you going?" "Why, to no place at all, good youth. For this is my vacation, granted yearly by the Law of Kalki—" "And who is Kalki, madame?" "Nobody as yet: but he will come as a stallion. Meanwhile his Law precedes him, so that I am spending my vacation peacefully in Hell, with none of my ordinary annoyances to bother me." "And what, madame, can they be?" "Why, you must understand that it is little rest a vampire gets on earth, with so many fine young fellows like yourself going about everywhere eager to be destroyed.""

"Let us extinguish this candle says Jurgen, "for I have seen so many flames to-day that my eyes are tired." So Florimel extinguished the candle, with a good-will that delighted Jurgen. And now they were in utter darkness, and in the dark nobody can see what is happening. But that Florimel now trusted Jurgen and his Noumarian claims was evinced by her very first remark. "I was in the beginning suspicious of your majesty," said Florimel, "because I had always heard that every emperor carried a magnificent sceptre, and you then displayed nothing of the sort. But now, somehow, I do not doubt you any longer. And of what is your majesty thinking?" "Why, I was reflecting, my dear," says Jurgen, "that my father imagines things very satisfactorily.""

"The insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror. The bug cried to the three judges, — Now, by St. Anthony! this Jurgen must forthwith be relegated to limbo, for he is offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent.... — And how can that be?... says Jurgen. — You are offensive,... the bug replied, — because this page has a sword which I chose to say is not a sword. You are lewd because that page has a lance which I prefer to think is not a lance. You are lascivious because yonder page has a staff which I elect to declare is not a staff. And finally, you are indecent for reasons of which a description would be objectionable to me, and which therefore I must decline to reveal to anybody...."

"In Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms,... the tumblebug explained. — I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries...."

"I am quite content, in this Comedy of Appearances, to follow the old romancers' lead. "Such and such things were said and done by our great Manuel," they say to us, in effect: "such and such were the appearances, and do you make what you can of them." I say that, too, with the addition that in real life, also, such is the fashion in which we are compelled to deal with all happenings and with all our fellows, whether they wear or lack the gaudy name of heroism."

"They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs. They tell also that Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him."

"He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool. Then, too, young Manuel was very often detected smiling sleepily over nothing, and his gravest care in life appeared to be that figure which Manuel had made out of marsh clay from the pool of Haranton. This figure he was continually reshaping and realtering. The figure stood upon the margin of the pool; and near by were two stones overgrown with moss, and supporting a cross of old worm-eaten wood, which commemorated what had been done there."

"Now I wonder what it is you find in that dark pool to keep you staring so?" the stranger asked, first of all. "I do not very certainly know," replied Manuel "but mistily I seem to see drowned there the loves and the desires and the adventures I had when I wore another body than this. For the water of Haranton, I must tell you, is not like the water of other fountains, and curious dreams engender in this pool."

"I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon."

"Eh, Manuel, and will you re-model the world?" "Who knows?" says Manuel, in the high pride of his youth. "At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered."

"You are now a famous champion, that has crowned with victory a righteous cause for which many stalwart knights and gallant gentlemen have made the supreme sacrifice, because they knew that in the end the right must conquer. Your success thus represents the working out of a great moral principle, and to explain the practical minutiae of these august processes is not always quite respectable."

"I am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. Look you, Niafer, I had thought I would be changed when I had become a famous champion, but for all that I stand posturing here with this long sword, and am master of the hour and of the future, I remain the boy that last Thursday was tending pigs."

"I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking and my own desire. Of course it is very fine of me to be renouncing so much wealth and power for the sake of my wonderful dear Niafer: but she is worth the sacrifice, and, besides, she is witnessing all this magnanimity, and cannot well fail to be impressed."

"The magician looked at the tall warrior for a while, and in the dark soft eyes of Miramon Lluagor was a queer sort of compassion. Miramon said, "Yes, Manuel, these portents have marked your living thus far, just as they formerly distinguished the beginnings of Mithras and of Huitzilopochtli and of Tammouz and of Heracles—" "Yes, but what does it matter if these accidents did happen to me, Miramon?" "— As they happened to Gautama and to Dionysos and to Krishna and to all other reputable Redeemers," Miramon continued. "Well, well, all this is granted. But what, pray, am I to deduce from all this?" Miramon told him. Dom Manuel, at the end of Miramon's speaking, looked peculiarly solemn, and Manuel said: "I had thought the transformation surprising enough when King Ferdinand was turned into a saint, but this tops all! Either way, Miramon, you point out an obligation so tremendous that the less said about it, the wiser; and the sooner this obligation is discharged and the ritual fulfilled, the more comfortable it will be for everybody.""

"Manuel gave it up, and shrugged. Well, let us conquer as we may, so that God be on our side. Miramon replied: "Never fear! He shall be, in every shape and attribute.""

"You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored! They have discarded you utterly."

"I shall never of my own free will expose the naked soul of Manuel to anybody. No, it would be no pleasant spectacle, I think: certainly, I have never looked at it, nor did I mean to. Perhaps, as you assert, some power which is stronger than I may some day tear all masks aside: but this will not be my fault, and I shall even then reserve the right to consider that stripping as a rather vulgar bit of tyranny."

"I must tell you that in this moment all doubt as to my attested worth went out of me, who had redeemed a kingdom, and begotten a king, and created a god. So you waste time, my friend, in trying to convince me of all human life's failure and unimportance, for I am not in sympathy with this modern morbid pessimistic way of talking. It has a very ill sound, and nothing whatever is to be gained by it."

"I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that there is no help for it."

"I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from mystery to mystery, with pathetic makeshifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with poltroonery. So in a secret place his youth was put away in exchange for a prize that was hardly worth the having; and the fine geas which his mother laid upon him was exchanged for the common geas of what seems expected."

"Now we must ford these shadowy waters," said Grandfather Death, "in part because your destiny is on the other side, and in part because by the contact of these waters all your memories will be washed away from you. And that is requisite to your destiny." "But what is my destiny?" "It is that of all loving creatures, Count Manuel. If you have been yourself you cannot reasonably be punished, but if you have been somebody else you will find that this is not permitted." "That is a dark saying, only too well suited to this doubtful place, and I do not understand you." "No," replied Grandfather Death, "but that does not matter."

"The stranger pointed at the unfinished, unsatisfying image which stood beside the pool of Haranton, wherein, they say, strange dreams engender.... "What is that thing?" the stranger was asking, yet again... "It is the figure of a man," said Manuel, "which I have modeled and remodeled, and cannot get exactly to my liking. So it is necessary that I keep laboring at it, until the figure is to my thinking and my desire.""

"Now, the redemption which we as yet await (continued Imlac), will be that of Kalki, who will come as a Silver Stallion: all evils and every sort of folly will perish at the coming of this Kalki: true righteousness will be restored, and the minds of men will be made as clear as crystal."

"I agree with Freydis that, for various reasons, nobody ever, quite, knew Manuel well. The hero of "The Silver Stallion" is, thus, no person, but an idea, — an idea presented at the moment of its conception... I mean, of course, the idea that Manuel, who was yesterday the physical Redeemer of Poictesme, will by and by return as his people's spiritual Redeemer."

"Each in his day, and within howsoever limited a circle of adherents, awakened that sustaining faith which appears vitally necessary to men's contentment, in the legend of the all powerful Redeemer who will come again, to-morrow. The theme of this book, then, is how that legend came to attach itself to Dom Manuel; how, in particular, that legend afterward affected, or did not affect, those persons who had known Dom Manuel almost intimately; and how in the end nobody believed in it any longer except Donander Veratyr. But Donander Veratyr was God."

"I am content. While my shrewd fellows rode about the world to seek and to attain power and wisdom, I have elected, as and unpractical realist, to follow after beauty."

"There is no gift more great than love."

"I must, here again, in mere honesty, I must distinguish. I mean that I think you know, as well as I do, love is not a gift which any man can give nor any person hope long to retain. Ah, no, madame! we shrug, we smilingly allow romanticists their catchwords: meanwhile it remains the veriest axiom, among realists like you and me, that love too is but a loan."

"In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility."

"Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams."

"I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie."

"… The famousness of Manuel is but a dream and a loud jingling of words which happen to sound well together; it is a vanity and a great talking by his old wife and gray peers; and yet, this nonsense, it may be, will hearten people, and will serve all people always, better than would the truth. And my faith is a foolishness, in that, because of a mere oath, — like your Star Warriors' Word of the Thingumajigs, sir, — I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie." "Each to his creed," said Yaotl. "So do men choose between hope and despair." "Yet creeds mean very little," Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label. …"

"Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain with electing for peculiarity among one's fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook. Even Coth saw that."

"These young people were getting a calm and temperate, but a positive, gratification out of being virtuous. There must, then, lurk somewhere deep hidden in humanity a certain trend to perverse delight in thus denying and curbing its own human appetites. And since the comparatively intelligent and unregenerate persons were all profiting by their fellows' increased forbearance, altogether everybody was reaping benefit. This damnable new generation was, because of its insane aspiring, happier than its fathers had been under the reign of candor and common sense."

"Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about."

"Is it not a pity, Guivric, that this Kalki will not come in our day, and that we shall never behold his complete glory? I cry a lament for that Kalki who will someday bring back to their appointed places high faith and very ardent loves and hatreds; and who will see to it that human passions are in never so poor a way to find expressions in adequate speech and action. Ohé, I cry a loud lament for Kalki! The little silver effigies which his postulants fashion and adore are well enough: but Kalki is a horse of another color."

"I consider the saga of no lord of the Silver Stallion to be worth squabbling over. Your sagas in the end must all be perverted and engulfed by the great legend about Manuel. No matter how you strive against that legend, it will conquer: no matter what you may do or suffer, my doomed Guivric, your saga will be recast until it conforms in everything to the legend begotten by the terrified imaginings of a lost child. For men dare not face the universe with no better backing than their own resources; all men that live, and that go perforce about this world like blundering lost children whose rescuer is not yet in sight, have a vital need to believe in this sustaining legend about the Redeemer: and the wickedness and the foolishness of no man can avail against the fond optimism of mankind."

"This is a strong magic.This is a sententious magic. They had warned me that I would here face my own destruction, that I would here face the most pitiable and terrible of all things: and I face here that which I have made of life, and life of me. I shudder; I am conscious of every appropriate sentiment. Nevertheless, sir, I must venture the suggestion that mere, explicit allegory as a form of art is somewhat obsolete."

"They tell me that truth lies somewhere at the bottom of a well, and at virtually the door of our home is a most notable if long dried well. Our location is thus quite favorable, if we but keep patience."

"Life is very marvelous ... and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed."

"I do not seek to copy nature. I, on the contrary, create to divert me such faith and dreams as living among men would tend to destroy. But as it is, my worshipers depart from me heartedly, in this grey corridor, and they are devoid of fear and parvanimity; for the effect of my singing, like that of all great singing, is to fill my hearers with a sentiment of their importance as moral beings and the greatness of their destinies."

"Nothing ... nothing in the universe, is of any importance, or is authentic to any serious sense, except the illusions of romance. For man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams. These axioms — poor, deaf and blinded spendthrift! — are none the less valuable for being quoted."

"Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors in it: and I have loved their youth and high-heartedness, and their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited them, — while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!"

"People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all."

"At the gate of the garden, beside the lingham post which stood there in eternal erection, sat a boy who was diverting himself by whittling, with a small green-handled knife, a bit of cedar-wood into the quaint shaping which the post had. His hair was darkly red: and now, as he regarded Alfgar with brown and wide-set eyes, the face of this boy was humorously grave, and he nodded now, as the complacent artist nods who looks upon his advancing work and finds all to be near his wishes."

"The touch of time does more than the club of Hercules."

"I do that which I do in every place. Here also, at the gateway of that garden into which time has not entered, I fight with time my ever-losing battle, because to do that diverts me."

"I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons — with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly."

"I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time's toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself."

"My immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays — as yet — more strong than the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers many not ever hope to win Ettare. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless."

"A strange thing happened to the American fantasy author James Branch Cabell in 1920. Cabell was a writer of novels, short stories and poetry who'd been published regularly for about twenty years to great critical acclaim (fans included Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken) but no commercial success whatsoever. The previous year, his latest mediaeval fantasy novel, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, had been published to the usual glowing reviews and public indifference, and appeared destined for the same obscurity as the rest of his work. Then the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, under John S. Sumner, brought an action against the novel for obscenity. The case went to court, amid considerable publicity – one side dedicated to protecting outraged public morals, the other championing the author as a martyr to the philistines – and dragged on for two years, at the end of which Cabell and his publishers were fully vindicated. The result was inevitable: Jurgen became a huge bestseller, and for several years everything Cabell wrote was a commercial success."

"Cabell's humour is complex and many layered, ranging from erudite jokes to evasion to broad satire to double entendres (“Why, I travel with a staff, my dear, as you perceive; and it suffices me.” “Certainly it is large enough, in all conscience.”). ... Cabell's portrayal of Hell and Heaven (which Jurgen visits in that order) is perhaps the cleverest part of the book, and caused him considerable trouble – his attitude to religion offended Sumner and co. as much as his oblique portrayals of sex. Both are, essentially, fakes, created by Koshchei at the insistence of Jurgen's own forebears and using the Bible as his model. However, “whatever Koshchei wills, not only happens, but has already happened beyond the ancientest memory of man and his mother. How otherwise could he be Koshchei?” So, despite being fakes, the Heaven and Hell of the Bible are also true, and always have been. The two things, we are told, that are impossible for Koshchei are love and pride, and his fascination with these two realms is that they are based on these two emotions: Heaven on the love that creates ideal versions of what is very far from ideal, Hell on the pride that demands petty sins and crimes as worthy of being recognised and punished. Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, which include a few Cabellian references, adopt this image of Hell, while being silent on the nature of Heaven."

"Cabell brought many new elements into the modern fantasy tradition, from his romantic poeticism to his ironic comedy; but perhaps the most impressive is the way his stories interact with one another. Each book stands quite comfortably alone, but the more Cabell you read, the more you understand. ... Jurgen has a curious conversation with a young man named Horvendile, who speculates that maybe he himself is the author of all that is happening. Horvendile's appearance here is only fleeting, but he recurs in a great many of Cabell's books, unchanged whatever the period, and does seem to exert a great deal of control over events. In The Cream of the Jest, however, we discover that Horvendile is actually the dream-self of the twentieth-century author, Felix Kennaston of Lichfield, who writes tales of mediaeval Poictesme and who wanders time as Horvendile, controlling all the characters he's created. So all these stories are really the creations of Kennaston – a figure not entirely unlike Cabell himself? Not quite. In the genealogical work that links all the characters together, Cabell makes it quite clear that Felix Kennaston is actually a descendant of both Jurgen and Manuel – whom he consequently couldn't possibly have invented. All Cabell's writings work like this, almost as if he were creating an intricate Chinese puzzle, and the wealth of connections between the books somewhat foreshadow later authors, such as Michael Moorcock, who also weave many separate books into a grand design. ... The female characters in Cabell's books are, almost without exception, either romantic beauties or nags – if not both at the same time – and they have no real substance in the stories beyond how they relate to the male characters. This can certainly be off-putting; but, if the reader can read the books as a product of their time and ignore these short-comings, there's plenty of reward. With that caveat, I heartily recommend Jurgen, along with the other books mentioned here. Oh, and what of those obscenities that caused John S. Sumner a near apoplexy? Well, I don't doubt you can find them, if you dig deep and approach Jurgen with plenty of humour and imagination, as well as being willing to look up various of Cabell's obscure references. Just don't expect Lady Chatterley’s Lover."

"James Branch Cabell totally ripped off Neil Gaiman!"

"The only American author of genius to devote his career to fantasy."

"There is an outcry against epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy like Jurgen. The salacious musical comedy goes its libidinous way rejoicing, while Ibsen and Bernard Shaw are on the black list. The fact is, of course, that the puritan has been turned by sexual repression into a sexual pervert and degenerate, so that he is insane on the subject."

"In the early part of the 20th century, there was a fantasy writer named James Branch Cabell who had a theory of writing as magic. His books (highly recommended, especially Jurgen) are both funny and mythological ... and it's easy to see how his process of creating characters was really a process of evocation and invocation."

"Actually, my favorite treatment of bad reviews is James Branch Cabell who, in the back of the 18 volume beautiful, huge collection of all of his works the Biography of Manuel, did a final section detailing what the reviewers said for each of his books. The book reviews go like this. The first 5 or 6 books, the reviews he quotes say something like: "Beautiful illustrations by the artist; such a pity about the words." Then you get to the reviews of Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice and the reviews say: "This a terrible book. It has no redeeming features; it's simply awful; a major misstep." And then every single review for every book he wrote after Jurgen begins, "Well, this isn't Jurgen. Apparently the author has lost the facility with which he wrote that delightful book." So he did put this wonderful parade of the ridiculous things that the reviewers said over time. As I mentioned in the blog, the only final thing that you can say about the reviewers, is this. The same day that the Publisher's Weekly review came in which said, "The road trip plot was completely aimless, but I liked the stuff in Lakeside," the Summer Book Forum book review came in which said, "The roadside stuff is amazing -- the novel only loses focus when you get to the stuff in Lakeside." ... If you actually pay any credence to it, it does make you crazy. So you just kind of smile and think, "Maybe someday I'll review all the reviewers someday." But you probably won't."

"The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, The High Place: Eighteen volumes of beautiful, worldly-wise writing by a forgotten American master. The books aren't all in print, and they range all over genre (including poetry and literary criticism). Of the fantasies, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen, and The High Place are three of the most notable, each book different but united in their sly wisdom."

"Cabell's far and away my favourite forgotten American writer — he wrote about 25 books, most of them very different from each other. The only ones to have remained more or less in print over the last forty years are the fantasies Figures of Earth, Jurgen and The Silver Stallion."

"I think that unless a reviewer gets their facts completely wrong, the author should shut up (and even then, the author should probably let it go — although I'm a big fan of a letter that James Branch Cabell wrote to the New York Times pointing out that their review of Figures of Earth was bollocks. ... For most authors, not being James Branch Cabell, it's probably wisest after reading a particularly stupid or vicious or bad review to mentally compose your letter to the editor, fill it with your sharpest and most cutting and brilliant bon mots, and then, having made it up, to successfully resist the urge to put it to paper, and to return cheerfully to work."

"Among the literary men of the time, Cabell's circle of friends was large: Sinclair Lewis, Joseph Hergesheimer, Carl Van Vechten, Burton Rascoe, Arthur Machen, to name a few. In his Nobel Prize Address in 1930, Lewis mentioned Cabell as one of the three American writers, along with Hemingway and Faulkner, worthy of the attention of the Swedish Academy. All in all, Cabell's reputation in the 20's must have seemed unassailable. But fortune's wheel turned, and the years that followed his initial popularity gave rise to a series of hostile critics. Cabell's novels were attacked from almost every conceivable position: stylistically, ideologically, socially, personally. In 1933, Granville Hicks, abdicating the critic's responsibility of balanced judgment, strikes at the author himself, calling him "a sleek, smug egoist," and his work "a structure of lies." Hicks begins the series of attacks; and Oscar Cargill in Intellectual America (1941), after damning "Cabell's reputation as a stylist" as "overblown," attempts to have the final word. He sums Cabell up "as a museum piece representing the psychology of a Virginian who would be an intellectual leader yet had not quite what it takes." However, the 1950's had better words for Cabell. Edward Wagenknecht in the Cavalcade of the American Novel (1952) reminds us that "James Branch Cabell …is still a unique and incomparable figure in American literature … He will never be the voice of a 'party' or of a 'movement'; he will never speak for anything smaller or more limited than the human spirit itself." Four years later, Edmund Wilson in a long article in the New Yorker suggested that Cabell's work had been maligned by partial critics and called for a reevaluation of his novels. In the 60's two book-length studies have appeared, and a biography is in preparation. Joe Lee Davis concludes that "one must — in common decency and simple justice — rank him among the major rather than the minor authors of the twentieth century... . Cabell is both the Spenser and the Boccaccio of the second American Renaissance." After years of neglect, Cabell's work is again receiving the attention it deserves."

"Torn between the ideal and the real, Cabellian man is forever thwarted in his quest for the ideal by the demands of the real. Cabell explores all the aspects of this human dilemma, perhaps reaching the conclusion that man can never achieve his ideals, simply because he must exist in the world of reality; and yet, for his self-preservation in that world he must, paradoxically, cling to these very ideals, unrealized, unrealizable. Even in the face of materialistic denial of spiritual value, man must believe in some kind of transcendent worth. Although the meaning of Cabellian comedy can be comprehended without the ability to recognize each learned allusion, the incidents of the novels are often based on classical, Russian, Hebrew, medieval, and even Aztec myths and legends. The reader is quite obviously in the presence of a learned author, and many of Cabell's intellectual pursuits can be traced to his college years."

"We may list Fitzgerald as one of the sources of Cabell's cosmic skepticism. As important as the source, however, is the attitude evinced. In his late teens, Cabell is beginning to feel the same tension between real and ideal apparent in his later novels. Man feels that it is "not fitting" (Jurgen would say "not just") that he should be trapped in a completely material world of "Raiment, Food and Fire," and yet, at the same time, he realizes the futility of seeking after "Knowledge" of "higher things." In this tension between real and ideal, man must somehow make the best of an infinitely poor situation."

"A Cabellesque satire on religion and sex."

"Cabell and Hitler did not inhabit the same universe."

"A book of dreams it is, and of very wonderful dreams."

"A curious, singular and enchanting book. I have read it with admiration and delight."

"Surely the cosmic irony that loves men's dullness because it alone can preserve them from madness, and retorts upon the cosmic terrors with a jest, is higher than gallantry and more enduring. It arrives at tolerance for all human shortcomings; it embraces high and low in its sympathies; it achieves urbanity as a final goal. It is the stuff of which great literature is made. And Mr. Cabell is creating great literature. A self-reliant intellectual, rich in the spoils of all literatures, one of the great masters of English prose, the supreme comic spirit thus far granted us, he stands apart from the throng of lesser American novelists, as Mark Twain stood apart, individual and incomparable."

"Mr. Cabell has played too long with the ideal of gallantry; he has devoted too much precious time to creating to fall in love with; he has listened too credulously to the ."

"Cabell's Biography of Manuel had been structured as parallel examinations of three contrasting modes of life, the Way of the Artist, the Way of Chivalry, and the Way of Gallantry. Cabell's personal "picture" of gallantry is said to have derived from the phony chivalry of late 19th century Virginians, which he imbibed with his mother's milk, his family being respectably connected to the upper crust of Virginian aristocracy. ... The models he cites, however, are the gallants of Restoration Comedy ... Mark Twain, fascinated by the chivalric ideal, was quite taken with Cabell's writings on the subject. His encouragement directed to Cabell resulted in Domnei, published in 1911 as The Soul of Melicent. ... in both The Silver Stallion and in his explications, Cabell conceptualizes the progressive vitiation of the Life as a matter of the blurring of the realities of person and place by the remove of time and the world's will to be deceived, and the work of the cosmic Romancer."

"It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. Cabell's artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ — "In the beginning was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if life may be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in success and splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, the choice or discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a conscientious dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at all — it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure — so long as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix Kennaston, the complete poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion. In each he has shown that this complete self-expression is achieved at the expense of all other possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry."

"Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in Figures of Earth he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred books, just as in Jurgen he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet truth about human life."

"The Cabell novels are ordinarily anything but grim. He is essentially a comic writer, and those who have placed him in the lineage of Boccaccio, Rabelais, Petronious Arbiter, Laurence Sterne are generally correct. Mr. Cabell is amused by the world; his novels are constructed upon that amusement. If the laughter seems sardonic sometimes, when the absurdities of his people seem only too recognizable to us, then we must remember that Mr. Cabell considers that amusing too."

"I have finished Jurgen; a great and beautiful book, and the saddest book I ever read. I don't know why, exactly. The book hurts me — tears me to small pieces — but somehow it sets me free. It says the word that I've been trying to pronounce for so long. It tells me everything I am, and have been, and may be, unsparingly... I don't know why I cry over it so much. It's too — something-or-other — to stand. I've been sitting here tonight, reading it aloud, with the tears streaming down my face..."

"Mr. Cabell has a profound creed of comedy rooted in that romance which is his regular habit. ... only gradually did his gaiety strengthen into irony. Although that irony was the progenitor of the comic spirit which now in his maturity dominates him, it has never shaken off the romantic elements which originally nourished it. Rather, romance and irony have grown up in his work side by side. ... He allows John Charteris in Beyond Life — for the most part Mr. Cabell's mouthpiece — to set forth the doctrine that romance is the real demiurge, "the first and loveliest daughter of human vanity," whereby mankind is duped — and exalted."

"Poor and naked as this aspiring ape must seem to the eye of reason, asks Mr. Cabell, is there not something magnificent about his imaginings? Does the course of human life not singularly resemble the dance of puppets in the hands of a Supreme Romancer? How, then, may any one declare that romance has become antiquated or can ever cease to be indispensable to mortal character and mortal interest? The difference between Mr. Cabell and the popular romancers who in all ages clutter the scene and for whom he has nothing but amused contempt is that they are unconscious dupes of the demiurge whereas he, aware of its ways and its devices, employs it almost as if it were some hippogriff bridled by him in Elysian pastures and respectfully entertained in a snug Virginian stable."

"Of all the fine places in the world where beautiful happenings come together, Mr. Cabell argues, incomparably the richest is in the consciousness of a poet who is also a scholar. There are to be found the precious hoarded memories of some thousands of years: high deeds and burning loves and eloquent words and surpassing tears and laughter. There, consequently, the romancer may well take his stand, distilling bright new dreams out of ancient beauty. And if he adds the heady tonic of an irony springing from a critical intelligence, so much the better."

"If the poets and warriors who make up the list of Mr. Cabell's heroes devote their lives almost wholly to love, it is for the reason that no other emotion interests him so much or seems to him to furnish so many beautiful happenings about which to write perfectly. Love, like art, is a species of creation, and the moods which attend it, though illusions, are miracles none the less. ... In this tale love is canonized: throned on alabaster above all the vulgar gods it diffuses among its worshipers a crystal radiance in which mortal imperfections perish — or are at least forgotten during certain rapturous hours. Ordinarily one cynical touch will break such pretty bubbles; but Mr. Cabell, himself a master of cynical touches and shrewdly anticipant of them, protects his invention with the competent armor of irony..."

"I had not been two weeks in the United States before someone said to me: "Well, at any rate, there is Cabell." That was a new name to me. I was given Beyond Life to read. My excitement during the discovery of that perverse and eloquent testament was one of the happiest moments of my American stay. I spent then a wild and eccentric search after his earlier masterpieces. Inside the cover of Beyond Life there were the titles of no less than fourteen books. I could see from the one which I held in my hand that Mr. Cabell was no careless writer. He had been writing then for many years and he was unobtainable! "No, he has never had any success," a bookseller told me. "No one ever asks for his books." That situation is now changed. There are, I imagine, a great many more persons in the United States of America asking for Jurgen than are likely to obtain it. That good, at any rate, an idiotic censorship has done."

"I am amazed that this remarkable and original talent has been at America's service for nearly twenty years, its patient waiting entirely unrewarded whether by the public or the critics or even the superior cranks. Let it be said at once that Cabell's art will always be a sign for hostilities. Not only will he remain, in all probability, forever alien to the general public, but he will also, I suspect, be to the end of time a cause for division among cultivated and experienced readers. His style is also at once a battleground. It is the easiest thing in the world to denounce it as affected, perverse, unnatural, and forced. It would be at once an artificial style were it not entirely natural to the man."

"Ideal Beauty, Ideal Love, and a Dream World belong to the romanticist. And it is through his concepts of these terms and the exercise of his talents with them that James Branch Cabell overtops to-day all other romantic writers in America. To watch his progress, to trace it through his works, is to observe how he cast off shackle after shackle of limitation, to ultimate unhampered movement over the earth, in the zenith that is Heaven or the pit that is Hell."

"I believe, that certain people — especially, perhaps, in Britain — have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. ... You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser — both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched. As for me, if we must read about imaginary kingdoms, give me James Branch Cabell's Poictesme. He at least writes for grown-up people, and he does not present the drama of life as a showdown between Good People and Goblins. He can cover more ground in an episode that lasts only three pages than Tolkien is able to in one of this twenty-page chapters, and he can create a more disquieting impression by a reference to something that is never described than Tolkien through his whole demonology."

"The more I have thought about Figures of Earth — and its sequel The Silver Stallion — the more remarkable they have come to seem. Looking back, one can now understand the abrupt fluctuations of Cabell's fame. ... Published when Cabell was forty-two, the chronicle of Manuel the Redeemer was not a book for the Young nor was it a book in the mood of the twenties. The story of the ambitious man of action who is cowardly, malignant and treacherous and who does not even enjoy very much what his crimes and double-dealing have won him, but who is rapidly, after his death, transformed into a great leader, a public benefactor and a saint, has the fatal disadvantage for a novel that the reader finds no inducement to identify himself with its central figure. Yet I am now not sure that this merciless chronicle in which all the values are negative except the naked human will, is not one of the best things of its kind in literature — on a plane, perhaps, with Flaubert and Swift."

"Cabell certainly doesn't take himself too seriously. I enjoyed Figures of Earth a lot; its humour was so enjoyably sophisticated that I had to check that the author really was an American :-)."

"I think they've always gone on. I've gotten some irate letters from oldsters saying "We did this in the 1930s. You didn't invent anything." And I'm like, "Gramps, you should have put a name on it and sold it, because that’s all I did.""

"I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television."

"It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one."

"Why have I sold out? You think I'm supposed to grow old, beating some trite old protest drum that people don't hear anymore? Please; protest is now just a backdrop for a Diesel clothing ad in a slick fashion magazine. My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way. It's time — for me, at least — to be clever and seduce people by entertaining them. I'll never be heard if I'm always ranting and griping."

"How sweet! You still believe in death... that's just so... quaint. Well, sorry to pop your death bubble, but there's no such thing. So make the best of things. Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Don't waste good drugs on killing yourself. Share them with friends and have a party. Or send them to me."

"The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art."

"I love being with people. But I need a script, a role, something that will help me overcome my fears of rejection and shame. Most religions and belief systems provide a blueprint for some sort of community. And the religion's leaders model a way of being. For example, in my book Choke, a character enacts his own death and resurrection every night – as does the narrator in Fight Club. Here's Jesus, allowing himself to look terrible in front of his peers. That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public."

"All I do is track a profane route to something (I hope) profound. Like swimming a river of shit for a kiss."

"If we can forgive what's been done to us... If we can forgive what we've done to others... If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world."

"Going to spring break at Ft. Lauderdale, getting drunk and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of a patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself. A damsel too dumb to know she is even in distress."

"The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything."

"The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact. Every play-by-play description on the radio, the home runs and strikeouts, even that's delayed a few minutes. Even live television is postponed a couple seconds. Even Sound and light can only go so fast."

"The muffled thunder of dialogue comes through the walls, then a chorus of laughter. Then more thunder. Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead."

"You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound You don't win with a lot of treble. This isn't about quality. It's about volume. This isn't about music. This is about winning. You stomp the competition with the bass line. You rattle windows. You drop the melody line, and shout the lyrics. You put in foul language and come down hard on each cussword. You dominate. This is really about power."

"These people so scared of silence. These are my neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics."

"We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics."

"No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline"

"No detail is too minor to note."

"Anymore, no one's mind is their own. You can't concentrate. You can't think. There's always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion. Someone's always spraying the air with their mood."

"There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper."

"Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world."

"When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy them, but now they call this free will. At least the Greeks were being honest."

"The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up."

"In journalism school, what they want you to be is a camera. A trained, objective, detached professional. Accurate, polished, and observant. They want you to believe that the new and you are always two separate things. Killers and reporters are mutually exclusive. Whatever the story, this isn't about you."

"You don't become a journalist because you're good at keeping secrets. Being a Journalist is about telling. It's about bearing the bad news. Spreading the contagion. The biggest story in history. This could be the end of mass media. The Culling song would be a plague unique to the Information Age. Imagine a world where people shun the television, the radio, movies, the Internet, magazines, and newspapers. People have to wear earplugs the way they wear condoms and rubber gloves. In the past, nobody worried too much about sex with strangers. Or before that, bites from fleas. Or untreated drinking water. Mosquitoes. Asbestos."

"Imagine the books burning. And tapes and films and files, radios and televisions, will all go into that same bonfire. All those libraries and bookstores blazing away in the night. People will attack microwave relay stations. People with axes will chop every fiber-optic cable."

"Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. So just relax, Helen Boyle told me, and just enjoy the ride. She said, "Even absolute corruption has its perks."

"Our footsteps echo against the concrete floor. The steel roof hums with rain. And she says, 'Don't you feel, somehow, buried in history?'"

"These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics.""

"Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell."

"Here's Big Brother, singing and dancing, force-feeding you, so your mind never goes hungry enough to think."

"Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself."

"Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. The gunshots and tires squeeling, sounds wee have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf."

"When you think about it from a native plant perspective," Oyster says."Johnny Apple seed was a fucking biological terrorist."

"The way you can go to Paris or Beijing, Oyster says, and everywhere there's a McDonald's hamburger, this is the ecological equivalent of franchised life-forms. Every place is the same place. Kudzu. Zebra mussels. Water hyacinths. Starlings. Burger Kings. The local natives, anything unique gets squeezed out.. He says, "We're landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.""

"Sure, everybody wants to play God, but for me it's a full-time job."

"According to Mona, you shouldn't kill people, because that drives you away from humanity. In order to justify killing, you have to make the victim your enemy. To justify any crime, you have to make the victim your enemy."

"Doctor Sarah didn't start out by attacking and berating everybody who called her radio show," Mona says. "She used to have a little time slot and a little audience, and she seemed to really care about helping people.""

"Still, he deserved to die. He called me an asshole."

"Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?"

"The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most passive person is actually an aggressor. Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animals- and even some people. "Slaughterhouses, factory farms, sweatshops," she says, "like it or not, that's what your money buys.""

"In order to save the world, Jesus Christ suffered for about thirty-six hours on the cross. I am willing to suffer an eternity in hell for the same cause."

"Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up the reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro."

"Maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do."

"History is is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse."

"I need to rebel against myself. It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear."

"The more people die, the more things stay the same."

"Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine the world more crowded and desperate every century. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value.Imagine traveling the world until you're bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melo-dramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted cut flowers you throw away."

"Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full of victims or enemies."

"Sticks and stones will break your bones, but now words can kill, too.This is how we must look to God. As if everything's just fine."

"This culling poem is a blessing. Why do you think it was created in the first place? It will save millions of people from the slow terrible death we're headed for from disease, from famine, drought, from solar radiation, from war, from all the places we're headed."

""The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch."

"Either an ancient cursed Egyptian mummy has come back to life and is trying to kill the people next door, or they're watching a movie."

"If you haven’t already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people. In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus."

"The journalist researches a story. The novelist imagines it. What’s funny is, you’d be amazed at the amount of time a novelist has to spend with people in order to create this single lonely voice. This seemingly isolated world. It’s hard to call any of my novels “fiction.”"

"All my friends with PalmPilots and cell phones, they're always calling themselves and leaving reminders to themselves about what's about to happen. We leave Post-it notes for ourselves. We go to that shop in the mall, the one where they engrave whatever shit you want on a silver-plated box or a fountain pen, and we get a reminder for every special event that life goes by too fast for us to remember. We buy those picture frames where you record a message on a sound chip. We videotape everything! Oh, and now there's those digital cameras, so we can all email around our photos — this century's equivalent of the boring vacation slide show. We organize and reorganize. We record and archive."

"Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away."

"People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party...As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do."

"To create a race of masters from a race of slaves, Mr. Whittier said, to teach a controlled group of how to create their own lives, Moses had to be an asshole."

""It's not a matter of right and wrong," Mr. Whittier would say. Really, there is no wrong. Not in our minds. Our own reality. You can never set off to do the wrong thing. You can never say the wrong thing. In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take--what you do or say or how you choose to appear--is automatically right the moment you act."

"What you have to love about drinking is, every swallow is an irrevocable decision. You charging ahead, in control of the game. It's the same with pills, sedatives and painkillers, every swallow is a first definite step down some road."

"Stink for privacy, the new way to protect personal space. Intimidation by odor."

"A journalist has a right... ...and a duty, to destroy the golden calves he helps create."

"You are permanent, but this life is not," Mr. Whittier would say. "You don't expect to visit an amusement park, then stay forever."

"The earth, he'd say, is just a big machine. A big processing plant. A factory. That's your big answer. The big truth. Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it goes round. We're the rocks. And what happens to us--the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse--why, that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright."

"In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we're meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn't suffering. It was erosion. It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process."

"Every apostle or disciple," Mrs. Clarke says, "as much as they're running to follow their savior-they're running just as hard to escape something else."

"For the rest of history, all over the world, people will be trying to save this same dead woman. This woman who just wanted to die."

"You can't unfuck a kid. Once you fuck a kid, you can't get that genie back in the bottle."

"This is just what human beings do-turn objects into people, people into objects. Back and forth. Tit for tat."

"As a fundraiser, our first idea was 'Five Bucks to Punch a Mime.'"

""Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you." p205"

""What matters," Sister Vigilante says, "is, people need a monster they can believe in." A true horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it's just us versus us."

"With the angel of death going door to door, people stayed together. They quit bitching and behaved."

"I lost my virginity through my ear."

"The whole idea of men creating perfect robot women for their own pleasure, it happens every day. The most "beautiful" women you see in public, none of them are for real. They're just men perpetuating their perverted stereotypes of women. Just the oldest story in the world. There's a penis on every page of Cosmopolitan magazine if you know where to look."

"We should forgive God..."

"Chapter 19, Absolution"

"That's how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It recreates some forgotten terror. Something we'd like to think we're grown beyond. But it can still scare us to tears. It's something you'd hoped was healed."

"If there's a trick to doing a job you hate... Mrs. Clark says it's to find a job you hate even more."

"We love drama. We love conflict. We need a devil or we'll create one."

"Telling a story is how we digest what happens to us," Mr Whittier says, "It's how we digest our lives. Our experiences."

""I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong again." p76"

""The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors." p144"

"People fall so in love with their pain, they can't leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves."

"Some stories, Mr.Whitter would say, you tell them and you use them up. Other stories, they use you up. p288"

"Some stories, you use up. Others use you up."

"The world will always punish the few people with special talents the rest of us don't recognize as real."

"A book is as private and consensual as sex."

"Leather shoes and fried chicken and dead soldiers are only a tragedy if you waste their gift sitting in front of the television. Or stuck in traffic. Or stranded at some airport."

"That's the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell."

"Their teeth white, as if they never used teeth for anything except to smile."

"Some stories, she'd say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be."

"Until you can ignore your circumstances, and just do as you promise," he says, "you'll always be controlled by the world."

"You will always have some excuse not to live your life."

"Her dress, swimsuit-tight, leotard-tight, her pantyhose run with women pedaling bicycles going nowhere at a thousand calories an hour."

"What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven."

"If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead."

"The first time we meet another person an insidious little voice in our head says, 'I might wear eyeglasses or be chunky around the hips or a girl, but at least I'm not Gay or Black or a Jew.' Meaning: I may be me - but at least I have the good sense not to be YOU."

"It simply makes sense that I should miss my parents more than they miss me, especially when you consider that they only loved me for thirteen years while I loved them my entire life."

"In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for earth."

"Yes, and I know that when a supersexy older girl with hips and breasts and nice hair wants to take off your glasses and to paint you a smokey eye she's merely trying to enroll you in a beauty contest she's already won. It's the kind of slummy, condescending gesture, like when rich people ask poor people where they summer. To me, this smacks of a blatant, insensitive 'let them eat cake' type of chauvinism."

"If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.""

"I do hereby and forever abandon abandoning all hope. Honestly, I give up on giving up. I'm just not cut out to be some hopeless, disillusioned wretch with no aspirations for the rest of the eternity, sprawled catatonic in my own feces on a cold stone floor. In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple of days of hopelessness. Future scientists would call it Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case of history chasing rainbows."

"These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print."

"Ninety percent of all new business ventures fail. Apparently, ten percent of the time you get lucky, and that's enough to support a modern economy. I'm betting that's what separates us from the animals; animals are lucky only nine percent of the time. I suspect this is true because I play strip poker with my cats and they rarely win. In fact, it's gotten to the point where they run like cowards at the sound of my electric shaver."

"It's useless to expect rational behavior from the people you work with, or anybody else for that matter. If you can come to peace with the fact that you're surrounded by idiots, you'll realize that resistance is futile, your tension will dissipate, and you can sit back and have a good laugh at the expense of others."

"You're only as important as your furniture. And that's at peak levels of dignity. [...] If you think about it, you can get fired but your furniture stays behind, gainfully employed at the company that didn't need you anymore."

"A Mission Statement is defined as "a long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly." All good companies have one. Companies that don't have Mission Statements will often be under the mistaken impression that the objective of the company is to bicker among departments, produce low-quality products, and slowly go out of business."

"Contrary to popular belief, it's often your clothing that gets promoted. [...] Always dress better than your peers so your clothes will be the ones selected for promotion. And make sure you're in your clothes when it happens. One man made the mistake of bringing his dry cleaning to work and ended up as a direct report to his own sports jacket."

"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."

"The office is designed for "work," not productivity. Work can be defined as "anything you'd rather not be doing." Productivity is a different matter. Telecommuting substitutes two hours of productivity for ten hours of work."

"If not for the compulsion of engineers, mankind would have never seen the wheel, settling instead for the trapezoid because some Neanderthal in Marketing convinced everybody it had great braking power. And there would be no fire, because some middle-manager cave person would point out that if fire was such a good idea the other cave people would already be using it."

"The goal of change management is to dupe slow-witted employees into thinking change is good for them by appealing to their sense of adventure and love of challenge. This is like convincing a trout to leap out of a stream to experience the adventure of getting deboned."

"The most important skill for any leader is the ability to take credit for things that happen on their own."

"I have a saying: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.""

"As a manager you could do a lot of thinking, experimenting, and continuous training. Or you can just do what everyone else does and blindly follow my directions like an unthinking zombie. Blind obedience is easier than the alternatives and the pay's the same. In fact, the pay is better, if you look at it from an hourly perspective."

"Always "lead by example." Let's say you're trying to reduce costs in the company. You can set an example by ordering your chauffeur to get his hair cut at Super Cuts. This is the kind of personal sacrifice that inspires the employees. Soon you'll be able to squeeze their health benefits like a tourniquet on a seedless grape."

"When we are born, all humans are clueless, self-absorbed, and helpless. Most babies will grow out of it. Those who don't become managers."

"When you have an exceptionally nasty project, present it to your employee as a "challenge." That seemingly minor change in syntax will cause the employee to feel like an Olympic athlete instead of the boot-stomped carpet mite that he is."

"Rumors are an excellent way to keep your employees nervous and edgy, which is similar to being alert. Actually, it's better. When they're alert they realize what you're doing to them and they resist. But when they're edgy they work like crazed bumblebees and die of stress before they become cynical. In other words, everyone wins."

"The most efficient way to implement an empowerment program is to have meetings where you punish people for the decisions they made while at the same time encouraging people in the group to think for themselves. Eventually, the employees become numb, thus developing a healthy tolerance to the hopelessness of their situation. Hopelessness isn't the same as happiness, but it's enough to make the employees stop complaining, and that's a good start."

"People don't change their basic nature, they just accumulate more stuff upon which they can apply their stupidity, selfishness, and horniness. From this perspective, the future isn't hard to predict."

"Technology magnifies the ability of one person to have a big impact on other people. If that doesn't scare you, then the next time you see professional wrestling on television, look at the crowd shots and ask yourself if you'd like those people to have a bigger impact on your life."

"Of all the things that influence elections, it appears that information is the least significant. Elections are won by the candidate whose staff members are the most skilled at manipulating the voters. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because you have to be quite smart to figure out the best way to manipulate millions of Induhviduals into marching in the same direction."

"A growing number of workers -- those who are more clever than industrious -- have already discovered the unbridled joy of sitting at home and getting paid for sleeping, eating, masturbating, and watching television. This technique -- sometimes called telecommuting -- has all the financial advantages of being employed with none of the stigma of being a filthy, perverted hobo."

"Companies form confusopolies to make it impossible for the average Induhvidual to determine who has the lowest price. This way each major company gets a share of the pie, the size of which depends on how skillfully they can dupe customers with advertisements. That will be the primary job of marketing professionals in the future-- disguising the true cost of your product in order to be a successful confusopolist."

"The first thing that young people need to realize is that the concepts of "career" and "job security" are a bit dated. In the future, most people's jobs will involve scrambling around like frightened chipmunks trying to find the next paycheck in an endless string of unrelated short-term jobs. But since "Frightened Chipmunk" doesn't look very impressive on a business card, people will call themselves entrepreneurs, consultants, and independent contractors."

"Rich guys used to be able to manipulate the stock market and make huge profits at the expense of smaller investors. It was big news when the small investors discovered they'd been screwed. Now there are many safeguards against the small investor ever finding out how much he's getting screwed."

"I predict that news outlets will try to compensate for the loss of relevant news by focusing on stories that are more shocking and depressing than ever. At least that way they'll get your attention and sell advertising even if the stories aren't "news" in the traditional sense."

"What if there are other optical illusions about our existence that are just as major as the illusion of the Sun revolving around the Earth? [...] What are the odds that you live in exactly the window of human existence when all of the major optical illusions have been discovered? Wouldn't that be an amazing coincidence, since every previous generation of humans has believed they were born in that window of time?"

"Thinking is easier than working. And the best kind of thinking is the kind where you don't have to write anything down, i.e., "meeting thinking." When you think up an idea during a meeting, all you have to do is blurt it out. You won't have to involve any parts of your body except your mouth and maybe your brain stem."

"Never laugh when you're being sarcastic. It will ruin the effect. If you feel the uncontrollable need to giggle, wait until your boss says something hilarious, such as, "Is this only Wednesday? It feels like Friday already!" Then you can throw back your head, open your mouth like you're about to swallow a live porpoise, and laugh like a naked teenager in a field full of pussy willows. Sincerity like that will make your sarcasm all the more convincing."

"Unless you work alone, one of the biggest assaults on your happiness is something called a meeting. A meeting is essentially a group of people staring at visual aids until the electrochemical activity in their brains ceases, at which point decisions are made. It's like being in suspended animation, except that people in suspended animation aren't in severe physical discomfort and praying for death."

"Trying to win an argument with an irrational person is like trying to teach a cat to snorkel by providing written instructions. No matter how clear your instructions, it won't work. Your best strategy is to reduce the time you spend in that sort of situation."

"Creativity doesn't require much time. But creativity always needs your energy. You can't create if you're pooped or your brain is full of junk. A person who manages creativity makes sure his schedule has lots of free spaces, no matter how many priorities are looming."

"For humor to work, it must be original. It's easy to create original humor -- or anything else original -- if you follow my formula. [...] Identify someone who has more creative talent than you do, then try to imitate that person exactly. If you're like me, you can depend on your lack of talent to make your imitation look nothing like the source. Over time, you'll drift even further from the source of your theft, thus becoming "original.""

"The hardest part of writing humor is finding a topic that hasn't already been used more times than the only back scratcher at the Institute of Very Itchy People. Ideally, you want a situation that makes you smile even before the humor has been added. If you start with a fresh and inherently funny situation, you're halfway home. [...] If a topic makes you gag, or clench your buns, or laugh, or sigh, or retch -- or react physically in any way -- you have a winner."

"Some humor experts say the secret to humor is to combine something unexpected with something bad and then make sure it's happening to someone else. But if that's all it took, serial killers would be winning comedy competitions. The evening news is full of unexpected bad things that happen to other people. Most of it isn't funny, unless it involves exploding whales, ear biting, or pies thrown at billionaires."

"If you're going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. With creativity, if you don't win, you're usually no worse off than if you hadn't played."

"Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions."

"It is absurd to define God as omnipotent and then burden him with our own myopic view of the significance of human beings. [...] The concept of 'importance' is a human one born out of our need to make choices for survival. An omnipotent being has no need to rank things. To God, nothing in the universe would be more interesting, more worthy, more useful, more threatening, or more important than anything else."

"We like to believe that other people have the same level of urges as we do, despite all evidence to the contrary. We convince ourselves that people differ only in their degree of morality or willpower, or a combination of the two. But urges are real, and they differ wildly for every individual. Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being, the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into it."

"People think they follow advice but they don't. Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don't waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do."

"Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is also a way of signaling the importance of another person by showing your willingness to give that person your rarest resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce. Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless."

"Express gratitude. Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch people. Remember names. Don't confuse flexibility with weakness. Don't judge people by their mistakes; rather, judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remember that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will not be useful to anyone else."

"People who have children have the best work-avoidance excuses in the world. If you don't have kids, get some immediately. The playgrounds are full of them."

"There's a special word for bosses who care about their employees: unemployed. The whole point of being a boss is to get employees to do more work than they want to do and to accept less pay than they deserve. If a boss starts caring about employees, it screws up the whole oppressor-victim dynamic of capitalism."

"The only people who serve on juries are people who have nothing better to do. Many of those people have jobs, which means jury duty is more pleasant than their jobs! [...] If my job was less pleasant than jury duty, I'd want to convict innocent people just to see their eyes bulge when they hear the verdict."

"It's illegal to kill yourself in a quick and painless way, but if you do it slowly over a few decades -- say by not exercising -- that's called laziness, not suicide, and it's completely legal. You might even get credit for being jolly or get a job as a TV chef on a cable network."

"The only person who wants real fairness is whoever has the worst life on earth, because he has nothing of his own to share in return. I don't know who that person is, but I have a mental image of a naked guy with no arms and legs, living in a rented poison ivy patch and being forced to read this book."

"The fastest way to spot a weasel is to look at a shiny surface. The second-fastest way is to look for people who are certain about the future. When a person conveys a sense of certainty during times of great uncertainty, that is either a sign of mental illness called "leadership" or a sign of a weasel who is trying to get his way."

"Humanity is like a huge organic computer. The hardware is functioning fine — reproducing more humans, creating food, learning — but the software is broken. Beliefs are our software. When the software works properly, our beliefs help us survive. Sometimes there are glitches in the software, in the form of delusions that are harmful. My job is to remove the glitches."

"Extermination had begun. A thick rain of missiles streaked through the sky and landed on hospitals, schools, bridges, homes, mosques, businesses, and military targets. The missile crews and jet pilots didn't know what they were blowing up or why. [...] No one questioned why entire blocks — eventually entire cities — were being annihilated. Everyone did his job as if it were nothing more than delivering packages."

"The public didn't know who said it first, but it was the most powerful question in human history. In nine words it overturned centuries of tortured logic and magical thinking. It pushed superstition into a cage and gave common sense room to maneuver. [...] The question was translated into thousands of languages, published billions of times. In English it was "If God is so smart, why do you fart?""

"Facts don't matter. What matters is how you feel."

"I want to be clear that I'm not expressing a preference for ignoring facts."

"If your debate partner leaves the realm of fact and reason for any of the diversions I mentioned, you just won the debate. Declare victory and bow out."

"A skilled persuader can blatantly ignore facts and policy details so long as the persuasion is skillful."

"Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason."

"A skilled persuader who understands both social media and the news business can easily stir the pot to create an advantage through chaos."

"The things that have the most mental impact on you will irrationally seem as though they are high in priority, even if they are not. That's persuasion."

"Did my persuasion make any difference? There is no way to tell."

"Trump ignores facts whenever they are inconvenient. I know you don't want to think this works in terms of persuasion. But it does."

"Trump can invent any reality he wants for the less important topics."

"Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."

"If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying."

"The biggest issue in this election is something called flip-flopping, and all candidates are accused of doing it. A strong leader is expected to maintain steadfast resolve in his opinion even if the environment changes or he gets new information. In any other context, that would be considered the first sign of a brain tumor. When presidents do it, it's called leadership, and frankly, we can't get enough of it."

"As you know, the best way to solve a problem is to identify the core belief that causes the problem; then mock that belief until the people who hold it insist that you heard them wrong."

"Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt."

"The world isn't fair, but as long as it's tilting in my direction I find that there's a natural cap to my righteous indignation."

"Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn't mean I can't be the first."

"They say that dogs lick their own genitalia because they can. But I think it's at least partially because they don't have the Internet."

"Ask a deeply religious Christian if he’d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don’t seem so bad lately."

"There’s nothing more humbling than seeing your best quotes in a list, and thinking they could have been written by a coma patient with a keyboard and spasms."

"If an economist uses a complicated model to predict just about anything, you can ignore it. By analogy, a doctor can’t tell you the exact date of your death in 50 years. But if a doctor tells you to eat less and exercise more, that’s good advice even if you later get hit by a bus. Along those same lines, economists can give useful general advice on the economy, even if you know there will be surprises. Still, be skeptical."

"My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser."

"You might think the word “homemade” is just a word we use as a marketing ploy. But what you don’t realize is that the staff sleeps here at night. If your tablecloth is wrinkled, that’s why."

"We know the goats are imported because they don’t speak English."

"If you think it’s easy to write jokes about fried calamari, you’ve probably never tried."

"If you have questions about this salad, give your server the spinach inquisition."

"Named after the great romaine emperor, Julius Salad."

"We smoke the bacon so you don’t have to."

"This sandwich used to include endive, but no one wanted to eat a BELT."

"Our salmon sandwiches are so good you’ll want to swim upstream to our kitchen and spawn. But please don’t."

"If our mushrooms make you hallucinate, please inform us immediately so we can overcharge you."

"We use only the finest days of the week in this dish."

"This dish might not turn you into a syndicated cartoonist, but whatever you’re doing now probably isn’t working either."

"If you don’t believe your salmon is wild, ask it to fetch your newspaper and see what happens."

"Stacey puts a little love in each pasta shell. But it’s self-love, so it won’t help you that much."

"Biblical scholars tell us that this is the same meal that Jesus ate at the last supper. But hey, I’m sure you have a good reason for ordering something else."

"Our scallops are so delicious your mouth will thank you, which is creepy because your mouth can actually talk."

"The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. This has not proved to be the winning strategy that you might think."

"The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It's just easier this way for everyone. You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles."

"The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn't ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, "Here's your square hole"? The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I'm saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness."

"Years later, when "Dilbert" was in thousands of newspapers, people often asked me if I ever imagined being so lucky. I usually said no, because that's the answer people expected. The truth is that I imagined every bit of good fortune that has come my way. But in my imagination I also invented a belt that would allow me to fly and had special permission from Congress to urinate like a bird wherever I wanted. I wake up every morning disappointed that I have to wear pants and walk. Imagination has a way of breeding disappointment."

"But history has turned on a few people—like the Founding Fathers and Jesus Christ come to mind—who used the same tricks: They describe to people a better vision of themselves. And Trump fits into that [model] in the most direct way you could possibly do. He’s saying, "You're an American, I'm going to make you feel great"."

"I am saying: I see a flame thrower. I think the flame thrower guy wins in the stick fight."

"When you understand persuasion ... the truth is not as useful as it should be ..."

"I think New Yorkers are more provocative in every way."

"If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year. Republicans will be hunted. Police will stand down."

"Much of politics is about hating imaginary people."

"I thought it was true until I saw it in the news."

"[P]olitics is about winning the definitions of words."

"When a young male (let’s say 14 to 19) is a danger to himself and others, society gives the supporting family two options [...] 1. Watch people die. 2. Kill your own son. Those are your only options. I chose #1 and watched my stepson die. I was relieved he took no one else with him."

"If one more person hallucinates to me about some "program" where teens are kidnapped and "fixed" and returned to their happy parents, I might explode. No such thing exists. You have two options. Only two. No help is coming. Only death and suffering."

"If I were to invent a solution to the dangerous young man problem, I think it would involve putting them all in one place so they could only hurt each other, not necessarily in jail, just away from society. Once they are separated from society (and drugs) maybe help is possible."

"Political differences are mostly a matter of what frightens you the most, with a thin frosting of rationalization on top."

"If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that's a hate group. I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there's no fixing this. This can't be fixed."

"You should absolutely be racist whenever it's to your advantage. Every one of you should be open to making a racist personal career decision."

"Most of my income will be gone by next week [...] My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this, am I right? There's no way you can come back from this."

"In a way I think [Trump] may have brought it on himself. His very first statement about Hillary Clinton should be in jail. I feel like when he started talking real jail then politics changed. And [the Democrats] said "If you're going to talk real jail for us, we're actually going to put you in jail." And it looks like that's what's happening."

"Every single one of our large entities, we've seen, is corrupt. From the FBI to the DOJ. I'm not talking about every person, but at least leadership elements. We've seen that our congress can be corrupt. We've seen that the CDC, basically everybody's corrupt once you find out what's really going on. The exception, we're told, is all 50 separate elections for a national election, all 50... All 50 of them are all good, but everything else is corrupt? But not those 50 things?"

"[About the 2024 US presidential election:] It feels like not an election to find your best guy, or woman. [...] It screams two sides trying to stay out of jail."

"There is no such thing as as news about public figures that's true."

"The way that most political hoaxes are done is that the person who gets cancelled did a real thing, lets say it's on video or they wrote it in this email, but nobody can imagine how that could be out of context. [...] You look at it and you go 'You know, I don't know the whole story, but how in the world could I be wrong about this? I'm looking right at it. It's really clear.' And that's how the trick is done, because there are ways to manipulate it to its actual opposite."

"If your job is to look for that stuff, any offense, well you're gonna find it because that's your job. And the more you find, the more you're worth I guess, because you found a lot of it."

"If you could reframe race relations, that would be the biggest win in America. And so here's my reframe: Every time somebody says 'The average of this group is not doing as well as the average of this group', they're fucking you. They are not your friend."

"I could not have been luckier. I have the luckiest cancellation of anybody who's ever been cancelled. [...] It just couldn't have been better. It just absolutely could not have been better."

"Every calamity has its bard, and downsizing's is Scott Adams."

"Scott Adams is a very, very funny guy who writes a brilliantly perceptive comic strip."

"Candy Is Dandy But liquor Is quicker."

"Oh, things are frequently what they seem, And this is wisdom's crown: Only the game fish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down."

"Man is a victim of dope In the incurable form of hope."

"Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?"

"Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons."

"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."

"I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it."

"It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you oughtn't..."

"It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin, That lays eggs under your skin."

"The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing, Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing."

"To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up."

"Good wine needs no bush, And perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot."

"Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit... So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves."

"Abracadabra, thus we learn, The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you're given, The less you lead, the more you're driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul should take If the tax collector hasn't got it before I wake."

"Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave When they think that their children are naive."

"Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, And yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him."

"Any hound a porcupine nudges Can't be blamed for harboring grudges. I know one hound that laughed all winter At a porcupine that sat on a splinter."

"Hark, hark! the lark On windswept bark Freezes against a sky of lead! Now see him stop, Take one small hop, And suddenly keel over dead!"

"The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you, How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you! Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry. Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She washed her hands, and she straightened her hair up, Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up."

"Once in a night as black as pitch Isabel met a wicked old witch. the witch's face was cross and wrinkled, The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled. Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed, I'll turn you into an ugly toad! Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry. Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She showed no rage and she showed no rancor, But she turned the witch into milk, and drank her."

"The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid, He had one eye in the middle of his forehead."

"She took those pills from the pill concocter, And Isabel calmly cured the doctor."

"Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.) Is planning a ban on smut. Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut. And his reverend occiput. Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut., Grit your molars and do your dut., Gird up your l__ns, Smite h_p and th_gh, We'll all be Kansas By and by."

"When smut's to be smitten Smoot will smite For G-d, for country, And Fahrenheit."

"Senator Smoot is an institute Not to be bribed with pelf; He guards our homes from erotic tomes By reading them all himself."

"Smite, Smoot, Be rugged and rough, Smut if smitten Is front-page stuff."

"The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk."

"The song of canaries Never varies, And when they're moulting They're pretty revolting."

"Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for."

"I can't say that I feel particularly one way or the other towards bell-boys, But I do admit that I haven't much use for the it's-just-as-well boys, The cheery souls who drop around after every catastrophe and think they are taking the curse off By telling you about somebody who is even worse off. No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, Their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed."

"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control."

"Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind."

"I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it."

"One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence."

"Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it."

"Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is."

"How easy for those who do not bulge To not overindulge!"

"Whether elected or appointed He considers himself the Lord's annointed, And indeed the ointment lingers on him So thick you can't get your fingers on him."

"Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile.""

"There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies."

"So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves."

"Listen, buds, it's March twenty first; Don't you know enough to burst? Come on, birds, unlock your throats! Come on, gardeners, shed your coats!"

"Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia, And he was coming torgia…"

"There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees, And they certainly annoy each other, But they certainly enjoy each other, Yes, they pretend to flout each other, But they couldn't do without each other..."

"Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech, Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say Mr. Smith is in love with his wife. Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life, But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever, Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever."

"And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light, And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night."

"Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor."

"God in his wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why."

"Some primal termite knocked on wood And tasted it, and found it good! And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today."

"The further through life I drift The more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift."

"I believe that people believe what they believe they believe."

"When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it. No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it."

"These are enlightened days in which you can get hot water and cold water out of the same spigot, And everybody has something about which they are proud to be broad-minded but they also have other things about which you would be wasting your breath if you tried to convince them that they were a bigot."

"And I have no desire to get ugly, But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly."

"Naturally I am not pointing a finger at me, But I must admit that I find Mr. Ickes or any other speaker far more convincing when I agree with him than when I disagree."

"O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge, For I wish to be purged of an urge. It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue, And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view."

"It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless, And it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going to tell it to you again regardless...""

"And what really turns my corpuscles to ice, I carry around clippings and read them to people twice. And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner, And the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be barrener. Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?"

"Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood All Right"

"Purity Is obscurity."

"The turtle trapped 'twixt plated decks Doth practically conceal its sex I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile."

"I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."

"When called by a panther, Don't anther."

"People expect old men to die, They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look At them with eyes that wonder when... People watch with unshocked eyes; But the old men know when an old man dies."

"Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi; Consider the Empire and Gandhi."

"It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral: In real life it takes only one to make a quarrel."

"People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it, And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it. I dont' mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it."

"Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing, But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny — Have you ever tried to buy them without money?"

"If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work."

"Miranda in Miranda's sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty."

"Silly girl, silver girl, Draw the mirror toward you; Time who makes the years to whirl Adorned as he adored you."

"Time is timelessness for you; Calendars for the human; What's a year, or thirty, to Loveliness made woman?"

"Oh, Night will not see thirty again, Yet soft her wing, Miranda; Pick up your glass and tell me, then — How old is Spring, Miranda?"

"Belinda lived in a little white house, With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon."

"Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink, And the little gray mouse, she called him Blink, And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard, But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard."

"Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, But Custard cried for a nice safe cage."

"The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon, And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon, He fired two bullets, but they didn't hit, And Custard gobbled him, every bit."

"How pleasant to sit on the beach, On the beach, on the sand, in the sun, With ocean galore within reach, And nothing at all to be done!."

"To lave in the wave, Majestic and chilly, Tomorrow I crave; But today it is silly. It is pleasant to look at the ocean; Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it."

"Leave the earth to the strong and athletic, And the sea to adventure upon. But the sun and the sand No contractor can copy; We lie in the land Of the lotus and poppy; We vegetate, calm and aesthetic, On the beach, on the sand, in the sun."

"May I join you in the doghouse, Rover? I wish to retire till the party's over."

"I've earned repose to heal the ravages Of these angelic-looking savages. Oh, progeny playing by itself Is a lonely little elf, But progeny in roistering batches Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez."

"Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it, Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it. They observe with glee the ballistic results Of ice cream with spoons for catapults, And inform the assembly with tears and glares That everyone's presents are better than theirs. Oh, little women and little men, Someday I hope to love you again, But not till after the party's over, So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover"

"The weather is so very mild That some would call it warm. Good gracious, aren't we lucky, child? Here comes a thunderstorm."

"The sky is now indelible ink, The branches reft asunder; But you and I we do not shrink; We love the lovely thunder."

"The garden is a raging sea, The hurricane is snarling; Oh, happy you and happy me! Isn't the lightning darling?"

"Fear not the thunder, little one. It's weather, simply weather; It's friendly giants full of fun Clapping their hands together."

"I hope of lightning our supply Will never be exhausted; You know it's lanterns in the sky For angels who are losted."

"We love the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt."

"Oh, than to enjoy a storm like this There's nothing I would rather, Don't dive between the blankets, Miss! Or else leave room for Father."

"My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; Contrariwise, my blood runs cold When little boys go by. For little boys as little boys, No special hate I carry, But now and then they grow to men, And when they do, they marry. No matter how they tarry, Eventually they marry. And, swine among the pearls, They marry little girls."

"A fig for embryo Lohengrins! I'll open all his safety pins, I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle, And give him readings from Aristotle. Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring, And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring. Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water To marry somebody else's daughter."

"Whales have calves, Cats have kittens Bears have Cubs, Bats have bittens, Swans have cygnets, Seals have puppies, But guppies just have little guppies."

"A young person is a person with nothing to learn One who already knows that ice does not chill and fire does not burn... It knows it can spend six hours in the sun on its first day at the beach without ending up a skinless beet, And it knows it can walk barefoot through the barn without running a nail in its feet. . . . Meanwhile psychologists grow rich Writing that the young are ones' should not undermine the self-confidence of which."

"First Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder, This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder. A staggering child, a child astounding, Dazzling, diaperless, dumfounding, Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed, A child to stagger and flabbergast, Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn, And the only perfect one ever born. Second Arrived this evening at half-past nine. Everybody is doing fine. Is it a boy, or quite the reverse? You can call in the morning and ask the nurse."

"Being a father Is quite a bother, But I like it, rather."

"Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy, You've had about seven hours' sleep since Friday, No wonder you feel that lost sensation; You're sunk from a riot of relaxation."

"Indoors or out, no one relaxes In March, that month of wind and taxes, The wind will presently disappear, The taxes last us all the year."

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else..."

"Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder, Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives being embarrassed by our parents and the last part being embarrassed by our childer."

"O Adolescence, O Adolescence I wince before thine incandescence . . . When anxious elders swarm about Crying "Where are you going?", thou answerest "Out," . . . Strewn! All is lost and nothing found Lord, how thou leavest things around! . . ."

"Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires, Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs."

"Other people, and it doesn't matter if they are Scandinavians or Celts, Think that anything is better than theirs just because it belongs to somebody else."

"I think that comparisons are truly odious, I do not approve of this constant proud or envious to-do; And furthermore, dear friends, I think that you and yours are delightful and I also think that me and mine are delightful too."

"Adam Had 'em."

"A wonderful bird is a pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week; But I'm damned if I see how the helican."

"The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name "Armistice Day." Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful."

"Not all segregationists are lunatics, or even dishonest men."

"Suspicion is the mother of invention And a fishin' expedition Needs no repetition For the end is never new: you need a friend and you."

"God is not dead — He is merely unemployed..."

"As we thrash on to a finish through the current thicket of flags and banners, we realize it is no finish at all, but a new inning. Secure in the rules, we know that, given three strikes, the truth will out."

"Looking back on things, the view always improves."

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

"Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent."

"Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it’s worthwhile to prove that he is himself."

"The best break anybody ever gets is in bein' alive in the first place. An' you don't unnerstan' what a perfect deal it is until you realizes that you ain't gone be stuck with it forever, either."

"I been readin' 'bout how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with ad-vanced brains. On the other hand, maybe we got the most brains...maybe our intellects is the universe's most ad-vanced. Either way, it's a mighty soberin' thought."

"[After Pogo says, Eventual Porky, I figger ev'ry critter's heart's in the right place., Porky responds:] If you gotta be wrong 'bout somthin', that's 'bout the best thing they is to be wrong 'bout."

"Is we runnin' TO it or FROM it?"

"Ever since I heard you is got a million dollars I notice you is fraught with perspicacity."

"Foo, a beautiful gal wastes her time gracin' up this swamp."

"I'll tell you, son, the minority got us out-numbered!"

"So we got fifty percent. Babe Ruth didn't do no better. — Did you mean hittin' it... or throwin' it?"

"Some is more equal than others, as is well known. It ain't that your majority is outnumbered, you're just out-surrounded."

"The natural born reason we didn't git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li'l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn't have no geiger counter."

"Halp! My powerful brain is blowed itself up!"

"Y'see, when you start to lick a national problem you have to go after the fundamentables. You want to cut down air pollution? Cut down the original source... Breathin!"

"Deck us all with Boston Charlie Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou. Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo! Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through! Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you! Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo Duck us all in bowls of barley, Hinky dinky dink an' Polly Voo! Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof! Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!"

"It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip."

"A cartoonist is someone who has to draw the same thing day after day without repeating himself."

"I never give my work to somebody else and say, "What do you think about that?" I just don't trust anybody. If I think it's funny, or if I think it's silly, I send it in anyway because I'm just trying to please myself. I never try to please a certain audience. I think that's disastrous. There's no way in the world you can anticipate what your reader is going to like or dislike."

"If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I'd write books — but I'm not, so I draw cartoons!"

"I just draw what I think is funny, and I hope other people think it is funny, too."

"The only thing I really ever wanted to be was a cartoonist. That's my life. Drawing."

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today ...... It's already tomorrow in Australia."

"You can't put tits and ass on the marquee!...Why not?...Because it's dirty and vulgar, that's why not!... Titties are dirty and vulgar?...Okay, we'll compromise. How about Latin? Gluteus maximus, pectoralis majors nightly...That's alright, that's clean, class with ass, I'll buy it...Clean to you, schmuck, but dirty to the Latins!"

"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

"I'll die young, but it's like kissing God."

"I want to perform an unnatural act."

"A Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as a descendant from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary, but you and I know what a Jew is: One Who Killed Our Lord... there should be a statute of limitations for that crime."

"I was arrested for using a ten-letter word that began with ‘c,’ and I would marry no woman who was not one."

"If something about the human body disgusts you, the fault lies with the manufacturer."

"Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" I know there's one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let's see, there's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike— that's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic. Right? Hmm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop; there's a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there's three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there's one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school."

"The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds."

"I'm not a comedian. I'm Lenny Bruce."

"Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago."

"If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career."

"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government.""

"Life is a four-letter word."

"In the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls."

", in one of his forensic flights, once described Lenny's hotel as "the on elegant .” The Marlton was, indeed, just a few doors west of Fifth Avenue, but it belonged exclusively to the honky-tonk world of , which it fronted with a façade so narrow-shouldered and a lobby so inconspicuous that you could walk up and down the street for years and never notice this tiny fleabag."

"Lenny Bruce's legacy is freedom of speech and telling it as it is, getting your life and putting it out on the table, telling everyone about it."

"That's what happened to Lenny Bruce. He got angry, and then he wasn't funny any more."

"Bruce was a great stage artist, a soloist of unbelievable virtuosity. The thousands of people who filled two houses of an old movie theater in Greenwich Village in December 1963 are a witness of that. So were the audiences that came back night after night during his month in London. The people who followed him were charmed by the free conversational directness of the man. He liked his audiences and took great pains to feel his way towards the individual temperament of each one. And if he felt comfortable with a group there was no end to the effort he would make to entertain and delight them. It’s not really true that he thrived on hostility, though he sometimes managed to put on a show of hard, glittering verve when the animals were in—people who talked loudly throughout his act, sounding "like tape played backwards." But generally an unfriendly audience made him stiff and defiant, and then he would sometimes become brutally dirty, just for the hell of it."

"One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene."

"Lenny Bruce (The Establishment) [is] the most original, free-speaking, wild-thinking gymnast of language this inhibited island has ever engaged to amuse its citizens. Mr. Bruce is dark-hatred, dark-suited and American; and the virulent, free-associating manner in which he excoriates the hypocrisies of his compatriots has earned him the epithet "sick." He is in fact pan nihilist, part moralist. He slouches around the stage clutching a microphone, smiling as he improvises, caring as he smiles, seldom repeating in the second show what he said in the first, and always conducting what amounts to a rush job of psychoanalysis on the audience he is addressing. He talks about the nuances of race relations (viz. the white liberals who worship Negroes but somehow never meet them) ... about the techniques of masturbation and the psychological duplicity ("a horny hoax") involved in sleeping with a prostitute; about pain, and laughter, and dying. At times Mr. Bruce drawls and mumbles too privately, lapsing in to a welter of Yiddish phrases borrowed from the show-business world that reared him. ... But at the end he had broken through frontiers of language and feeling that one had hitherto thought inviolable ..."

"And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce, That all my wealth won't buy me health So I smoke a pint of tea a day."

"Oh, the language is a bit loose; It's decidedly not Mother Goose. Outside on the marquee This quotation you'll see: "I was shocked!" and it's signed Lenny Bruce."

"They said that he was sick 'cause he didn't play by the rules He just showed the wise men of his day to be nothing more than fools"

"Just don't forget your history, dirty Lenny died so we could all be free"

"That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid."

"Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce."

"I want to be Lenny Bruce."

"Lenny Bruce, declares a truce and plays his other hand. Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', head buried in the sand."

"For Halloween, I want to be Lenny Bruce, I want them to hate me, so you can love me on the sly."

"Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage Lenny Bruce, Langston Hughes, to the stage"

"Lenny Bruce was trying to tell you many things before he died..."

"Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals."

"I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23."

"There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."

"No wife, no horse, no mustache."

"Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'""

"The persons we think we are have been manufactured out of some shotgun wedding of history and and imagination."

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."

"The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective."

"My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government."

"A true initiation never ends."

"Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically, "marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others."

"Obviously, the faster we process information, the more rich and complex our models or glosses — our reality-tunnels — will become. Resistance to new information, however, has a strong neurological foundation in all animals, as indicated by studies of imprinting and conditioning. Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this "conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku Klux Klan."

"Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil."

"Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope. I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue."

"We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear. The government has been paying farmers not to grow food for fifty years--while millions starve. Labor unions, business and government conspire to hold back the Microprocessor Revolution--because none of them know how to deal with the massive unemployment it will cause. (Fuller's books could tell them.) The utilities advertise continually that "solar power is at least forty years in the future" when my friend Karl Hess, and hundreds of others, already live in largely solar-powered houses. These propaganda advertisements are just a delaying action, because the utilities still haven't figured out how to put a meter between us and the sun."

"I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to make sense out of the world around me … typical in the sense of being one of the damn good models around these days. I am typical in the sense that ...a lot of people are on the same wave length as me. I get fan mail from people that are absolutely stunned that there's somebody else besides themselves who thinks this way. So, we're a minority, but there are a lot of us. On a planet this overcrowded, a minority can have a few million numbers. … More scientific than religious. More open than dogmatic. More optimistic than pessimistic. More future oriented than past oriented. And more humorous than serious. I really dread serious people. Especially serious, dogmatic people. I regard them as sort of what Reich called the emotional plague. I regard them as very dangerous."

"He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government. Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned. Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue. When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation."

"Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that's only because most people don't know what anarchist means. Most people hear you're an anarchist and they think you're getting ready to throw a bomb at a building. They don't understand the concept of voluntary association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on. So libertarian is a clearer word that doesn't arouse any immediate anxiety upon the listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles would be anarchists. They take the position which they call minarchy, which is the smallest possible government... The reason I don't believe in the smallest possible government is because we started out with that and it only took us 200 years to arrive at the czarist occupation of government that we have now. I think any government is dangerous no matter how small you make it. Instead of governments we should have contractual associations that you can opt out of if you don't like the way the association is going. Religions fought for hundreds of years over which one should dominate Europe and then they finally gave up and made a truce, and they all agreed to tolerate each other — at least in this part of the world... But I think government should be treated like religion, everyone should be able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not obligatory. I wouldn't mind paying tax money to a local association to maintain a police force, as long as we need one. But I hate like hell paying taxes to help the US government build more nuclear missiles to blow up more people I don't even know and don't think I'd hate them if I did know them. A lot of anarchists had a major roll in influencing my political thinking, especially the individualist anarchists. Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner especially. But I've also been influenced by Leo Tolstoy's anarcho-pacifism. And I find a lot of Kropotkin compatible even though he was a communist anarchist. Nothing wrong with communist anarchism as long as it remains voluntary. Any one that wants to go make a commune, go ahead, do it. I got nothing against it. As long as there's room to the individualist to do his or her own thing."

"I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it…."

"Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory."

"Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different."

"I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."

"I regard the two major male archetypes in 20th Century literature as Leopold Bloom and Hannibal Lecter. M.D. Bloom, the perpetual victim, the kind and gentle fellow who finishes last, represented an astonishing breakthrough to new levels of realism in the novel, and also symbolized the view of humanity that hardly anybody could deny c. 1900-1950. History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce’s view of Everyman as victim. Bloom, exploited and downtrodden by the Brits for being Irish and rejected by many of the Irish for being Jewish, does indeed epiphanize humanity in the first half of the 20th Century. And he remains a nice guy despite everything that happens... Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As for his "hobbies" as he calls them — well, according to the World Game Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human beings were murdered by other human beings, 193, 000,000 more humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars, revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly loutish and uncouth."

"Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history."

"No, they were not exactly automatons, but they did not know what they were doing. They take down a boy’s britches. They stare at his buttocks. They cane him until the buttocks bleed. And they believe this is virtue, because it is done in a school, and it becomes vice only if it is done in a place with a red lantern over the door."

"Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation."

"All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense."

"Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size...)"

"There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world."

"Conspiracy is just another name for coalition."

"The creative faculty, the god-power, is not used here with anything less than literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty existed, as surely as the paintings of Botticelli or the concerti of Vivaldi exist. When mercy was created, mercy existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless and pointless existence, we have made meaning and purpose; but since this creative act happens only when we relax after great strain, we feel it as 'pouring into us' from elsewhere. Thus, we do not know our own godhood and we are perpetually swindled by those who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but they can give us access to it, for a reasonable fee. And when we as a species were ignorant enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step further, invented original sin and other horrors of that sort, and made us even more 'dependent' upon them."

"The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is cursing only one part of it. To curse the fig tree, as in the funniest and most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually — because no part is truly separate from the whole. The fallacy is that one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is "the Lie that all men believe.""

"The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth."

""Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment."

"Why does the sexual appetite cause so much unspeakable joy and irrational misery, so much suicidal and homicidal madness, and so much absurd theological ranting? Because every sexual choice is going to play a role in determining the temperament and talents of the next generation, and of all future generations who will inherit the earth from us. To be simple about it for once, a single friendly fuck can fill a continent with morons or geniuses in only a few thousand years."

"The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles."

"Each mans spills the drink he loves."

"Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior."

"The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."

"Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."

"There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."

"ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE."

"The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness."

"And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above."

"Comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe—among many possibilities. As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again. The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere."

"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion."

"Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper."

"The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated primate history."

""Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back (without mirrors)."

"Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife only exists, for me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize the converse: I only exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader exclaim, like Byron of Wordworth, "I wish he would explain his explanation!", let us try it this way: If I am so fortunate as to be listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer, if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would be to hum the Hammerklavier. For, with music of that quality, one is hypnotized into rapt attention: there is no division between "me" and "my experience"."

"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it."

"The A∴A∴ must rank as the most secretive secret society in the world. Perhaps nobody, not even the few writers who have discussed it, knows for sure when the A∴A∴ began, which group claiming to be the A∴A∴ at present is the real A∴A∴, or even what the symbols A∴A∴ stand for — although many claim to know these things of course. … Occult historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe"), one of the eleven magic mottoes of Aleister Crowley."

"Most historians merely mention that Bruno was charged with the heresy of teaching Copernican astronomy, but Frances Yates, a historian who specialized in the occult aspects of the scientific revolution, points out that Bruno was charged with 18 heresies and crimes, including the practice of sorcery and organizing secret societies to oppose the Vatican. Yates thinks Bruno may have had a role in the invention of either Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry or both. Bruno's teachings combined the new science of his time with traditional Cabalistic mysticism. He believed in a universe of infinite space with infinite planets, and in a kind of dualistic pantheism, in which the divine is incarnate in every part but always in conflicting forms that both oppose and support each other. Whatever his link with occult secret societies, he influenced Hegel, Marx, theosophy, James Joyce, Timothy Leary, Discordianism, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich."

"Many tribal peoples have both all-male and all-female secret societies, which help maintain the cultural values or reality tunnel. Freemasonry is certainly the largest, and probably the oldest, and still the most controversial of the all-male secret societies surviving in our world. No two scholars can even agree on how old it is, much less on how "good" or "evil" it is. … Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious "conspiracy", Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic site on the web, always stresses these points and also offers personal testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies. The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain "pagan" elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the Spring Solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer's Golden Bough. The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith."

""Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still."

"You need the "is of identity" to describe conspiracy theories. Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and "mental" illnesses require the "is" to perpetuate them. (He often said, "Isness is an illness.") Korzybski also popularized the idea that most sentences, especially the sentences that people quarrel over or even go to war over, do not rank as propositions in the logical sense, but belong to the category that Bertrand Russell called propositional functions. They do not have one meaning, as a proposition in logic should have; they have several meanings, like an algebraic function."

"Dr. Wilhelm Reich was condemned for unscientific claims by the Food and Drug Administration in 1956 because of his theories about sexual freedom and his discovery of an alleged "orgone" energy. He quickly became the most world-famous victim of the FDA's quest to impose One True Faith on medical practice in the United States, because the Feds not only destroyed all the equipment in Dr. Reich's experimental laboratory but burned all his books, too, in an incinerator, and then they put him in jail where he died of a heart attack. Since many disapprove of this unconstitutional way of silencing heresy, Dr. Reich has remained a center of controversy. … In addition to his bio-physical heresies, Dr. Reich vastly offended many people by his sociological theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of the basic structure of sex-negative societies and has existed under other names in every civilization based on sexual repression. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the average citizen — a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in body reflexes — causes the average person to want a strong authority figure above them. Tyranny, in this model, is not created by tyrants alone but by neurotic masses who want tyrants."

"Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own."

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly."

"One of the most profound and important scientific philosophers of this century … His vast intelligence and sharp wit are sufficient to shock and enlighten the most heavily imprinted domesticated primate nervous system."

"In a world where we are all giants in a pygmy's hut, fighting over the space, he was one of the few trying to knock down the walls and stretch his legs."

"Robert Anton Wilson is the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. … Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of conspiracism, a sensibility that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to be exposed or lies to be debunked but as a bizarre mutant mythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights."

"Lady, it rose below vulgarity."

"Who's the dummy writing this show?!"

"I was in the middle of shooting the last few weeks of Blazing Saddles somewhere in the Antelope Valley, and Gene Wilder and I were having a cup of coffee and he said, I have this idea that there could be another "Frankenstein." I said not another — we've had the son of, the cousin of, the brother-in-law, we don't need another Frankenstein. His idea was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever. He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, "That's funny.""

"Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor."

"As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes."

"If they [presidents] can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country."

"To me, tragedy is if I'll cut my finger, that's tragedy...Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die."

"[explaining that Paul Revere was Anti-Semitic] He was scared they were moving into the neighborhood. "They're coming, they're coming. The Yiddish, they're coming""

"After I eat asparagus..."

"You know Cuneiform? You know Sanskrit? It's neither of those."

"Angel of Death ain't kissing me! I'm full of garlic!"

"It's Wheird, there's an H in there. Gotta hit that H otherwise they think I'm some sort of a kook!"

"[on ancient poetry] Nog Nog! Mkellen bebog! V'luch Matuch Maluch M'tog!"

"[on the greatest invention] Liquid Prell."

"No! You don't wear a hat on your gentles! You wear a hat on your head where you're supposed to wear a hat!"

"[On Churchill's Accent] "Ve must conquer da Narjies!" Now, we were fighting and killing Nazis. We all left and went looking for Narjies!"

"Max Bialystock: That's it, baby, when you've got it, flaunt it, flaunt it!"

"Max Bialystock: I'm wearing a cardboard belt!"

"Stormtrooper Mel : Don't be stupid, be a smarty Come and join the Nazi Party!"

"LSD as Adolf Hitler: Heil Baby!"

"Lead Tenor Stormtrooper: Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany Winter, for Poland and France!"

"Max Bialystock: How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?"

"Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings! Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?"

"Hope for the best. Expect the worst. The world's a stage. We're unrehearsed. No way of knowing which way it's going. Take your chances, there are no answers. Hope for the best. Expect the worst."

"Jim "The Waco Kid": My name is Jim, but most people call me...Jim."

"Sheriff Bart: Good mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'? Old Woman: Up yours, nigger! Jim "The Waco Kid": [consoling Bart afterwards]: What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers … these are people of the land … the common clay of the New West. You know – morons."

"Sheriff Bart: Excuse me while I whip this out."

"Sheriff Bart: Where the white women at?"

"Railway Worker: You shifty nigger! They said you was hung! Sheriff Bart : And they was right!"

"Sheriff Bart [waking up a drunk Jim in jail]: Are we awake? Jim "The Waco Kid": We're not sure. Are we...black? Sheriff Bart: Yes, we are. Jim "The Waco Kid": Then we're awake, but we're very puzzled."

"Sheriff Bart: Since I am your host and you are my guest what are your hobbies? What do you like to do in your free time? Jim "The Waco Kid": Oh you know, play chess...screw. Sheriff Bart: (Quickly) Let's play chess!"

"Igor: My grandfather used to work for your grandfather. Of course the rates have gone up."

"Igor (limping off): Walk this way — and Dr. Frankenstein limps off after him."

"Dr. Frankenstein:: Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags? Igor:: [doing a Groucho Marx] Certainly, you take the blonde and I'll take the one in the turban."

"Igor:: Sed-a... Inga:: Sed-a... Igor:: Dirty word! He said a dirty word!"

"Dr. Frankenstein Damn your eyes! Igor (pointing at his lazy eye) Too late!"

"Josephus: I'm Josephus, and I'm the main course over at the Colosseum!"

"Count de Monet: [consistently mispronounced as "count da money"] Bearnaise? Bernaise: Yes? Count de Monet: Do we have any of those delicious raisins left? Bearnaise: You ate yours. These are mine. Count de Monet: Au contraire, they are mine! I paid for them! Hand them over! Bearnaise: [gives the bag of raisins to the Count, sotto voce, mimicking] 'Au contraire, I paid for them! They're mine!' [blows a raspberry] Count de Monet: Don't be saucy with me, Bearnaise! Bernaise: [mouths] Bitch."

"Count de Monet: It is said that the people are revolting King Louis XVI: You said it. They stink on ice."

"Impoverished Paris Street Merchant (Jack Carter): Rats, rats for sale. Get your rats. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille."

"Other Street Merchant: Nothing, I have absolutely nothing for sale!"

"King Louis XVI: [prior to his arrest] It's good to be the king. [also used in Robin Hood- Men In Tights and The Producers [Musical]]"

"Tomás de Torquemada: It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull."

"Moses: Lord, I shall give these laws unto thy people. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?! All pay heed! The Lord! The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen- [drops one of the tablets] Oy. Ten! Ten commandments! For all to obey!"

"Madame Defarge: And now, let us end this meeting on a high note. [proceeds to sing a sharp high note, followed by the rest of the revolutionaries]"

"Jail Inmates: Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty Six!"

"Excuse me, is this England?"

"Dark Helmet: I see your schwartz is as big as mine."

"Radar Officer: I've lost the sweeps, the bleeps, and the creeps! [Explains via vocal sound effects] Dark Helmet [aside to Colonel Sandurz]: That's not all he's lost."

"Dark Helmet : What? You went over my helmet?"

"President Skroob: What the hell, it works on Star Trek!"

"Dark Helmet: What's the matter Colonel Sandurz... chicken?!"

"Dark Helmet [after everyone on the bridge announces that their last name is "Asshole."]: I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes."

"Lonestar: That's all we needed, a Druish Princess!"

"Dark Helmet : So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

"Ahchoo:Man, white men can't jump!!"

"King Richard: From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as...'Johns'!"

"Little John: Let's face it — you've got to be a man to wear tights!"

"Man In Front of Castle: Hey Abbot!"

"Townspeople: A black sheriff? Blinkin: He's Black?! Ahchoo: Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles."

"Robin Hood: Watch my back! Achoo: Yo' back just got punched twice."

"Will Scarlet Blinkin, fix your boobs, you look like a bleeding Picasso."

"Blinkin Aaahhhh, you lost your arms in battle, but you grew some nice boobs (Blinkin gropes the Venus De Milo statue left behind after creditors take away Loxley Castle)"

"Robin Hood: Because unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with a English accent."

"Sheriff of Rotingham King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!"

"Spiegel: Can you also get your revenge on him by using comedy?"

"He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key."

"Mel Brooks has all the consistency of Spike Milligan, the subtle self-censorship of Benny Hill, and the human warmth of Bob Monkhouse. It's a good job he has the brassneck and occasional brainstorms of Mel Brooks or he would be a monster."

"Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle — a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values."

"All the apprehensions that surface in Brooks's comedy have the same eventual source: a fear — or, to put it more positively, a hatred — of death."

"(introduction) This page is about me and why everything I like is great. If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong."

"Imagine finding out you got rejected from community college, then finding out that your alcoholic father got arrested for domestic abuse, you lost all your life savings in a Ponzi scheme, and all of this happens to you while you're on the space shuttle Challenger. Then you wake up and it's all a bad dream, except you realize that you're at work without clothes on, and work is NASA and you're really on the space shuttle Challenger. That's what this movie is like, only infinitely worse. Everything about this movie pissed me off, save for the lesbian finger bang scene. Except even that sucked because it wasn't in the movie."

"There are very few people who look good in red lipstick, and those people usually juggle for a living."

"When the iPhone was first announced, CEO Steve Jobs spewed enough BS to cover a football field full of babies 3 feet deep in bullshit, which sounds cool because he could have potentially murdered a football field full of babies, but he passed on this opportunity by introducing the phone instead."

"There aren't many things I don't want to experience in life, but the sensual caress of a parent going through mid-life crisis is one of them."

"There are only three reasons you should ever be this delighted about anything, and all of them involve you being a hot chick, meeting me, and lube."

"I've only had one dream in my life with kids in it that didn't involve me gnawing my feet off, and it had to do with kids doing my laundry.""

"Watching this video is like being bukkaked with stupid."

"What are the odds that a simple geometric folding of a $20 bill with elements of design that were conceived in 1928 by a committee of treasurers, a full 42 years before the World Trade Center even existed, could accidentally contain a representation of both terror attacks? Pretty good, apparently."

"Science can learn a lot from someone this stupid."

"Don't you retards think before you click "Send" that maybe someone on the other end is actually going to read your stupid, malformed emails some day? It's almost like there's a record full of incomprehensible bullshit playing in your mind 24/7, and you put the needle down randomly and whatever it picks up, you just type it up in an email and shoot it off to me, usually mid-sentence."

"Notice the telltale sign of a man who has a penchant for boy ass: the pedophile-smile or 'pedosmile.' It's part smirk, part grin, and all molester. It's like he's having a two-for-one sale on rape, no refunds or exchanges."

"Fernando is wanted for 'murder with a deadly weapon' according to the FBI website. As opposed to being wanted for murder with a non-deadly weapon?"

"Elizabeth Duke is possibly the only person on the FBI list wanted for communism. What a bitch! Duke was a member of the extremist group, May 19th Communist Organization, whose objective was the violent overthrow of the US. The group was largely active from 1978 to 1985, at which time they got busted and thrown in jail where their new objective became to prevent any violent uprisings in their ass. She's the only one still around. It's not really a group anymore if it's just you, dipshit! America wins."

"Okay, here's a tip: if you're doing something creepy like molesting children, you don't need to take topless photos of yourself to seal the deal. We know, the pedosmile is enough."

"Kenley is alleged to have sexually assaulted her eleven-year-old stepson, then ditched out on bond. The FBI says Kenley has ties to Arkansas. Talk about trying to find a needle in a hay stack."

"If you've ever wondered what someone who's horny enough to pay a bunch of adolescents $5000 in cash in exchange for some action looks like, take a good look at Ms. Walker's picture. Three words: battery operated dildo. Or if you happen to be a stickler for brevity like I am, just one word: cucumber. Because, damn."

"I've pissed higher than the tallest building in Utah."

"HOLY SHIT, I LIVE NEXT TO THE DRY PEA AND LENTIL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD? Why didn't anyone tell me??? Here I've been shit-listing Utah for all these years, when I've been living in a state that borders the dry pea and lentil capital of the world. I hereby revoke anything bad I've ever said about Idaho. And by revoke, I mean reaffirm."

"New rule: if your state has more cows than people, you don't get to be a state anymore."

"It simultaneously warms my heart and wears my delete key when I get emails from twelve-year-olds."

"Thank you Joe Nobody for giving me your expert opinion on what missile sounds like, because gas station superintendents are usually the best people to ask about the sonic signature of ballistic missile thrust."

"Most of the screen on a blog is blank for an imaginary populace of readers still using 640x480 resolution. I didn't buy a 19" monitor to have 50% of its screen realestate pissed away on firing white pixels, you assholes."

""This sounds like the soundtrack of a coma." (On U2's song One Step Closer)"

"Look out pop-culture! Bono has had enough of 'romantic love'."

"...you could sell these people hookers in a vagina storm."

"General Grievous," a bad guy so sinister, his very name stands for PAIN AND SUFFERING. Nice job assholes... Why not just call all your characters "Evil" and "Bad" next time?"

"Note that the name of the show is 'Trippin' ' and not 'Tripping' because the addition of the letter 'g' would not be consistent with the views of MTV's urban youth demographic who tend to frown upon linguistic formalities such as proper enunciation. I mean, proper 'nunciation, yo!"

"The theme song states "YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE... YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A CHANGE." Wow, thank you MTV, for making me feel empowered and independent, like only a multinational media conglomerate can."

"It's every man's dream to have a penis so large that he must hire a small boy to carry it."

"There's no shame in masturbation, unless you get caught."

"Passing out while you try to kill yourself is like failing at failing."

"I have a different stance on abortion: I'm against abortion, but for killing babies. That way everyone loses, and I win. I'm neither pro choice, nor pro life; I'm pro you-shutting-the-hell-up. The only way I'd be "pro choice" is if it meant I could choose which babies I could abort, and only then if I could lift the age restriction to 80.""

"I was going to write about how I was going to take away women's right to vote, but that one is pretty obvious since nobody wants women to vote, except for women, and they don't count."

"She started crying when she saw the busted colon I gave her pussy husband, so she took one of her shoes off and threw it at me. I caught the shoe between my pecs and I started to laugh like a pirate. Then she started walking towards me to take her shoe back, and there was no way I was going to let this bitch get near my chest so I body slammed her into a cactus that happened to be there. She got up and was uglier than before, so I did what I always do when women start to cry: I went back inside to play video games."

"That reminds me of how much I hate babies. Why does everyone want to save them? There are too many babies. I'm not saying we should kill them, but if you happen to be giving your baby a bath and the phone rings.. well, nobody will judge you. Besides, you might get free brownies out of it at the funeral, and brownies rule."

"I'm impressed that they've been able to take a 2D character with a 1D personality and bloat it into a 3D disaster."

"It was like Rambo sent them all Christmas cards, but instead of cards it was murder."

"I've got pissing people off down to a science."

"It's not that I rule, it's that everyone else sucks more than I do. We all suck, and whoever sucks the least is king."

"If trashy television was a video game, The Jenny Jones show would be the final boss."

"The earth's population is about 6 billion. At 15 minutes per person, that amounts to over 171,000 years we'd have to spend just sitting around watching people be "famous." To hell with that."

"The next person's phone I hear set to Vivaldi is going to need a hydraulic pump to pry their phone out of their ass."

"Is someone you know anorexic? A good joke would be to tell them that they're fat. They'll laugh because anorexic people aren't fat. HAHAH"

"I hate the help screen, I hate the options, I hate the card graphics, I hate the default window size, everything. I HATE SOLITAIRE."

"If people who look different don't necessarily think differently, which they don't, then aren't they essentially discriminating against them by "embracing" them as being "diverse"?"

"… the real reason ADD exists is because executives at pharmaceutical companies need to make their Lexus payments."

"When I say this game is hard, I mean hard like nipples-on-a-blind-lesbian-in-a-fish-market hard."

"I don't get it: they re-package the same shitty football games every year, update a few stats, call it a new game and millions of suckers keep buying them. What's the point? Why not just go outside and play real football instead? Or even better yet, get bent. Nobody likes football."

""This car just looks terrible; it looks like it was designed by a blind child with arthritis. In a coma." (on the Honda Element)"

"Why are politicians so full of shit? Why can't there be a congressman (congressman, yes man, tough shit to all you feminists) that just speaks his mind without the meaningless bullshit and ass kissing?"

"My Nuts are just under critical mass, a few inches away from collapsing into a super dense vortex of nutsaqutron (a type of radiation given off by enormous balls)."

"Having spelling errors is one thing, but c'mon. I've typed out more coherent sentences with my penis."

"If there were a building that stood for grammatical integrity, this email would be the plane that crashed into it."

"I subscribe to an email service from CNN called "CNN Breaking News." Basically every time shit hits the fan, you're supposed to receive an email. Most of the "breaking news" I've received has been as earth shattering as an actor arrested for drunk driving. Wow, now excuse me while I change my freshly soiled boxers."

"How can a movie be "one of the best"? There's only one "best" movie, so saying something is "one of the best" is stupid and doesn't make sense. Technically any movie that's not the worst could be considered "one of the best." Imagine that, another empty phrase used by marketing people. I want to punch someone in the throat."

"In an effort to salvage the money I wasted on this bullshit, I ate six cups of jello, one bag of corn nuts, a Soynut bar, and a bag of jelly beans for dinner. The only thing X-TREME about this experience was the X-TREME dump I took later that night:"

"For example, the cover on the right depicts Lobo (also known as "the main man") kicking Santa's ass. Santa did something to piss Lobo off (or nothing, it makes no difference), and Lobo RUINED HIS SHIT."

"No, I'm not a democrat or a republican. I'm just a guy who's tired of the bullshit."

"President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Good I say, global stability was getting to be a pain in the ass."

"Whales are drinking all our water and eating our sailors."

"Finally when the movie started, I thought the bullshit ads were over, but no. First thing they showed was a "coke break" sponsored and produced by coke. [...] I paid $7 for a movie, NOT FOR BULLSHIT ADVERTISEMENTS."

"What the hell is "partly cloudy" supposed to mean? When is it not partly cloudy? … Just tune into a weather forecast. Chances are you'll hear the phrase at least 3 or more times."

"The next time you ask someone how their day is going, expect, no, DEMAND a response. Don't settle for good. Demand the truth. Make them admit that they're having a shitty day, and then do your best to make it worse."

"I can't go on, I'm going to go do something less painful like stick my dick in the oven."

""If you got caught screwing around on the job, you'd probably get fired, and so would I. Why should he get away with it?" (on Bill Clinton)"

"...'SummerGrl19?' Very clever handle by the way, the only way you could make it any more unoriginal or cliche would be to add the words 'happy, cute' or 'princess' to the name."

"There are pigs that can manipulate joysticks, yet you morons can't even send me an intelligible email."

"The only thing that goes with Crocs is social Ostracism."

"Let's face it: there are few things in this world more stupid than dancing. Except break dancing, which pirates and lumber jacks would agree is awesome. Other than that, dancing makes me envy cripples."

"If women ran the world, we'd still be searching for the wheel."

"Some people think I'm conceited. Oh well. All my friends think I'm better than they are. Sometimes my friends ask 'so how come you rule so much?' One time I decided to play basketball, but I suck at basketball so I lost. Just kidding, I kicked everyone's ass because I'm the best. I own everyone at everything. There's no use in trying to be as good as me because it's impossible. There aren't enough words to describe how good I am. THE UNIVERSE REVOLVES AROUND ME. I AM KING. Everyone wishes they were me. EVERYONE. If I weren't me, I'd wish I was. I love me."

"6. You realize that if 10 million people saw the movie once, each wasting 3 hours of their lives, that 30 million hours have been wasted, and that if each person lived an average of 70 years, 3,424 years, or 49 lives will have been wasted watching the Titanic. James Cameron has effectively murdered 49 people. (Not necessarily a reason to cry, but it is to a sap that saw Titanic in the first place)."

"(introduction) "this page is about my opinions. if you disagree, you have a right to your opinion and i can respect that.""

"u know what? i thought about it and ive decided that your right, i shouldnt make fun of people who get fast cars. please accept my apology.............. psych! yeah right homo."

"4 example the other day i saw a black person walking down the street and i was like "omg a negro" but instead of walking on the other side i said "what would rumsfeld do?" so i stayed on the sidewalk. when he came up to me i wanted to show him that i have no problems with people of color so i said "hey" and offered him my spare change before he could even ask."

""my friend and i were watching mtv the other day when nelly came on and my friend was like "omg nelly rules". hes such an idiot, he only listens to trendy music. at least i like original stuff like beyonce."

"i hope that earns me some eprops (proper recognition in an electronic form lol) LOL LOL LOL!!!"

"HEY FAGGOT, YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY WE CARE ABOUT TERRI SCHIAVO AND NOT CANCER PATIENTS? BECAUSE FUCK YOU. SHOVE THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT. FUCK OFF!"

"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize."

"Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced — there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. And, much harder to endure than any raging condemnation, a certain number of old acquaintances among journalists, what in the galloping American slang we call the "I Knew Him When Club", have scribbled that since they know me personally, therefore I must be a rather low sort of fellow and certainly no writer. But if I have now and then received such cheering brickbats, still I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be fatuous not to expect a fair number in return."

"The trouble with this country is... that there're too many people going about saying "The trouble with this country is—""

"Slow yellow river flowing, willows that gesture in tepid August airs, and four children playing at greatness, as, doubtless, great men themselves must play."

"Probably none of the Weagles gave five minutes' thought a year to theology or ecclesiology, except Ora, who occasionally stirred up a lot of interesting family irritation by announcing that he was going to become a Catholic, an Episcopalian, a Buddhist, or a Seventh Day Adventist."

"Myron reflected that there are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don't wish to do."

"I understand you all want to be writers. Well, what are you doing here? Why the devil aren't you home writing?"

"Mr. Blingham, and may he fry in his own cooking-oil, was assistant treasurer of the Flaver-Saver Company."

"His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended."

"Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers."

"The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air."

"Mr. Wilkins came back and hemmed and hawed a good deal; he praised the work she hadn't considered well done, and pointed out faults in what she considered particularly clever achievements."

"It has been calculated that ninety-three million women in all parts of the world have ruined their complexions, and therefore, their souls, by Pemberton's creams and lotions for saving the same; and that nearly three-tenths of the alcohol consumed in prohibition counties is obtained in Pemberton's tonics and blood-builders and women's specifics, the last being regarded by large farmers with beards as especially tasty and stimulating."

"This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid spokesmen... to the effect that they were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing nerves to the effect that they live in a polite version of hell."

"She was not a Respectable Married Woman but fully a human being."

"There had to be one man in town independent enough to sass the banker!"

"I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it."

"The outhouse was so overmodestly masked with vines and lattice that it was not concealed at all."

"I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we’re wiser than you!' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now— and we're going to try our hands at it."

""I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday."

"Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race... They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;... that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;... that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ... 'Where does she get all them the'ries?' marveled Uncle Whittier Smail."

"The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman."

"It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others."

"With... small-town life... there are hundreds of thousands... who are not content. The more intelligent young people... flee to the cities... and... stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted... is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment... the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world."

"Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue."

"A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth... Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius. Such a society functions admirably in the production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors."

"Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door and calling 'em 'Brother' and 'Sister,' they let me sail right by with nary a clinch."

"Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself."

"The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do.' He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked. Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic. When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with the Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and 'a vengeful God...' then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers a felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, 'My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,' then Carol found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology."

"There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble."

"She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb."

"Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't say you're attacking them to excuse your own infractions. Yes, I've heard that plea.... To word it differently, 'You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don't believe in it, then you must live up to it!'"

"The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. ~ Ch. 1 [first sentence]"

"He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism—metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder—he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical and initiated. ~ Ch. 6"

"Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. ~ Ch. 6"

"Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber of Commerce had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them had spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion. ~ Ch. 6"

"At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from the Civil War straight to a farm which, though it was officially within the city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had never ridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book save the Bible, McGuffey's readers, and religious tracts; and he believed that the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and that the United States is a democracy.~ Ch. 6"

"Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophet of Punch, has shown that he is the world's greatest salesman of salvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritual regeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. He has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an average cost of less than ten dollars a head. ~ Ch. 7"

"I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries. ~ Ch. 7"

"Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first sight the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom. ~ Ch. 7"

"What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy. ~ Ch. 7"

"The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trouser-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever. ~ Ch. 8"

"The dinner was the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. ~ Ch. 8"

"For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom. ~ Ch. 9"

"They all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it. ~ Ch. 10"

"Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. ~ Ch. 12"

"The content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven.... Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good — kept him in touch with higher things.' ~ Ch. 16"

"She did her work with the thoroughness of mind which reveres details and never quite understands them. ~ Ch. 18"

"It came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. ~ Ch. 25"

"They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a tossup with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism. ~ Ch. 30"

"He heard them whispering—whispering... The independence seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering. ~ Ch. 32"

"All of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. ~ Ch. 34"

"He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance. ~ Ch. 34"

"The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. ~ Ch. 1, First lines"

"It is not a snobbish rich-man's college, devoted to leisurely nonsense. It is the property of the people of the state, and what they want—or what they are told they want—is a mill to turn out men and women who will lead moral lives, play bridge, drive good cars, be enterprising in business, and occasionally mention books, though they are not expected to have time to read them. It is a Ford Motor Factory, and if its products rattle a little, they are beautifully standardized, with perfectly interchangeable parts. ~ Ch 2"

"He was permitted, without restriction, to speak of himself as immoral, agnostic and socialistic, so long as it was universally known that he remained pure, Presbyterian, and Republican. ~ Ch. 2"

"In the study of the profession to which he had looked forward all his life he found irritation and vacuity as well as serene wisdom; he saw no one clear path to Truth but a thousand paths to a thousand truths far-off and doubtful. ~ Ch. 2"

"Gentlemen, the most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it. And the most important part of experimentation is not doing the experiment but making notes, ve-ry accurate quantitative notes — in ink. I am told that a great many clever people feel they can keep notes in their heads. I have often observed with pleasure that such persons do not have heads in which to keep their notes. This iss very good, because thus the world never sees their results and science is not encumbered with them. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 4"

"There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it. ~ Ch. 14"

"Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man. ~ Ch. 16"

"It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends. ~ Ch. 20"

"He preached to himself, as Max Gottlieb had once preached to him, the loyalty of dissent, the faith of being very doubtful, the gospel of not bawling gospels, the wisdom of admitting the probable ignorance of one's self and of everybody else, and the energetic acceleration of a Movement for going very slow. ~ Ch 21"

"Pickerbaugh apparently believed that this research would take six weeks; Martin had hoped to do it in two years; and with the present interruptions it would require two hundred. ~ Ch. 21"

"He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance. ~ Ch. 22"

"I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts. ~ Martin, Ch. 22"

"It is not known whether Martin ever completely accepted as a gentleman-scholar the Clay Tredgold who was devoted to everything about astronomy except studying it. ~ Ch. 22"

"She had called Martin a 'lie-hunter,' a 'truth-seeker.' They decided now that most people who call themselves 'truth-seekers'—persons who scurry about chattering of Truth as though it were a tangible separable thing, like houses or salt or bread—did not so much desire to find Truth as to cure their mental itch. In novels, these truth-seekers quested the 'secret of life' in laboratories which did not seem to be provided with Bunsen flames or reagents; or they went, at great expense and much discomfort from hot trains and undesirable snakes, to Himalayan monasteries, to learn from unaseptic sages that the Mind can do all sort of edifying things if one will but spend thirty or forty years in eating rice and gazing on one's navel. To these high matters Martin responded, 'Rot!' He insisted that there is no Truth but only many truths; that Truth is not a colored bird to be chased among the rocks and captured by its tail, but a skeptical attitude toward life. He insisted that no one could expect more than, by stubbornness or luck, to have the kind of work he enjoyed and an ability to become better acquainted with the facts of that work than the average job-holder. ~ Ch. 25"

"Men of measured merriment! Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment, the men with measured merriment, oh, damn their measured merriment, and DAMN their careful smiles! ~ Ch. 25"

"You have curiosity and you are stubborn. You do not accept rules. Therefore I t'ink you will either make a very good scientist or a very bad one, and if you are bad enough, you will be popular with the rich ladies who rule this city, New York, and you can gif lectures for a living or even become, if you get to be plausible enough, a college president. So anyvay, it will be interesting. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26"

"Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me—oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist. To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith. He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26"

"He is the only real revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone knows how liddle he knows. He must be heartless. He lives in a cold, clear light. Yet dis is a funny t'ing: really, in private, he is not cold nor heartless—so much less cold than the Professional Optimists. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26"

"They've worked out elaborate charts classifying all intellectual occupations and interests, with the methods and materials and tools, and especially the goals—the aims, the ideals, the moral purposes—that are suited to each of them. Really tremendous! Why, a musician or an engineer, for example, could look at his chart and tell accurately whether he was progressing fast enough, at his age, and if not, just what his trouble was, and the remedy. ~ Ch. 40"

"Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."

"He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously."

"He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason."

"Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind."

"The grateful savants had accepted, and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning."

"His reasoning had been introverted, turned from an examination of men as mammals and devoted to a sorrow that sinful and aching souls should not more readily seek the security of a mystic process known as Conviction, Repentance, and Salvation, which he was assured by the noblest and most literate men he had ever known, was guaranteed to cure all woe. His own experience did not absolutely confirm this."

"Even if some details of dogma aren't true—or even all of 'em—think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!" "Are they? I wonder! Don't cheerful agnostics, who know they are going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they'll go to hell themselves. Consolation? No!"

"It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three of four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease."

"To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring to explain before dozens of popeyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand—fifty thousand—a million a year, and all this by the Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine."

"He had never been sure but that there might be something to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a hell of burning sulphur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his New Thoughts, his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything. It did not matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements."

"What had he learned? Enough Hebrew and Greek to be able to crawl through the Bible by using lexicons—so that, like all his classmates once they were out of the seminary, he always read it in English. A good many of the more condemnatory texts of the Bible—rather less than the average Holy Roller carpenter-evangelist. The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers."

"The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon."

"His text was from Proverbs: "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins." He seized the sides of the pulpit with his powerful hands, glared at the congregation, decided to look benevolent after all, and exploded: "In the hustle and bustle of daily life I wonder how many of us stop to think that in all that is highest and best we are ruled not by even our most up-and-coming efforts but by Love? What is Love—the divine Love of which the—the great singer teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow that comes after the dark cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest stars we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still around the quiet tomb. What is it inspires all great men—be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed is music but the voice of Love!""

"He explained that hatred was low. However, for the benefit of the more leathery and zealous deacons down front, he permitted them to hate all Catholics, all persons who failed to believe in hell and immersion, and all rich mortgage-holders, wantoning in the betraying smiles of scarlet women, each of whom wore silk and in her bejeweled hand held a ruby glass of perfidious wine."

"He was still not at all certain that he was doing any good, aside from providing the drug of religious hope to timorous folk frightened of hell-fire and afraid to walk alone."

"I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me—I actually took my teachers seriously!"

"A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists"."

"Just what are the teachings of Christ? Did he come to bring peace or more war? He says both. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? He says both. Did he ever - think of it, God himself, taking on human form to help the earth - did he ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions from plagues? And you can't say his failure there was because he was too lofty to consider mere sickness. On the contrary, he was awfully interested in it, always healing some one - providing they flattered his vanity enough! What did he teach? One place in the Sermon on the Mount he advises - let me get my Bible - here it is: 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven,' and then five minutes later he's saying, 'Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." That's an absolute contradiction, in the one document which is the charter of the whole Christian Church. Oh, I know you can reconcile them, Phil. That's the whole aim of the ministerial training: to teach us to reconcile contradictions by saying that one of them doesn't mean what it means - and it's always a good stunt to throw in 'You'd understand it if you'd only read it in the original Greek'!"

"Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive."

"So debated Doremus, like some hundreds of thousands of other craftsmen, teachers, lawyers, what-not, in some dozens of countries under a dictatorship, who were aware enough to resent the tyranny, conscientious enough not to take its bribes cynically, yet not so abnormally courageous as to go willingly to exile or dungeon or chopping-block—particularly when they "had wives and families to support.""

"He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect."

"Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. 'Nother words, have a doctor who won't take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!"

"No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs—" "Hell and damnation!" "Why, Pater!" "Don't call me 'Pater'! If I ever hear that 'can't make an omelet' phrase again, I'll start doing a little murder myself! It's used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men's souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!"

"I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne."

"Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors. . . . One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting."

"Aaron was uncomfortable and a little afraid. This, he thought, is how God might pray to his God. ~ Ch. 1"

"Reverend Lucius Fairlow... a mild-spoken young-old man with mild chestnut hair and a mild chestnut mustache and a conservative theology which stuck mildly to the pleasant certainties of God's anger and eternal hellfire. ~ Ch. 2"

"Aaron had learned… from Mr. Fairlow's two-hour sermons on "The Jealousy of an Angry Jehovah Who Hath Weighed Sinners in the Balance and Found Them Wanting",... that God was a torturer who punished small boys for sins they might commit later. ~ Ch. 3"

"Good sense from a child was not necessarily contemptible beside foolishness from a grown-up. ~ Ch. 3"

"When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, 'tain't any laughing matter! ~ Ch. 3"

"It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind. ~ Ch. 4"

"It was of no use. That particular sort of coward and evader he was not, and he lay abed facing all his sins, all his slacknesses, and the merited punishment by a just and angry God. ~ Ch. 5"

"Deacon Uriel Gadd was a man of integrity, granite-rough and lichen-coated. The punishment in his rheumatism, clearly sent of God, and the defection of his son Elijah, had weakened him only in making him somewhat less contemptuous of his sentimental son Aaron. All other persons he divided into fools, scoundrels and the blessedly elect, with only himself indisputably in the last class. ~ Ch. 6"

"Hours then of blasphemy and fury and debate, all in the theological terms that seem shocking to the literate citizens today, who believe in God but just don't care to mention him or any of the other lowly friends they knew before they went to Yale. ~ Ch. 6"

"Everything seemed confused and contradictory, and he longed for one clear command from a divine martinet. ~ Ch. 7"

"Maybe he was not a good-enough Christian to get the proper zest out of mortifying his indolent flesh. ~ Ch. 15"

"Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working. ~ Ch. 17"

"The more the Dakota have to do with the white, the worse. The whites give him whiskey to get his furs and bimeby he don't want to trap so many furst but he want plenty more whiskey. The white traders take his girl, and all he get in swap is a disease. They take his land, and all he get is a leetle annuity so he don't do any work and starve slow. The Indian gets white man's gun an he is drunk and kill his own brother and they call him sinful. That's what he get from the white man—fine kettle, fine gun, fine blanket, the big pox, the small pox and religion. ~ Ch. 20"

"Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God. ~ Ch. 21"

"As they talked around the fire in the sitting-room, he was embarrassed by the nakedness of their piety. ~ Ch. 22"

"When he gets uppity about his supposed learning, I just take it on myself to remind him that God and his angels know almost as much as college professors ~ Ch. 23"

"He prayed, 'Lord God, let us be the kind of Christians that you would be if you were a Christian'. ~ Ch. 24"

"Aaron began to learn the Dakota language. Isaac, like a newly ordained Doctor of Philosophy, after years of being nagged into learning, rejoiced to be invited to stand up and look important and teach. He was astonished by his own erudition and by the fact that his class of one did not walk out. ~ Ch. 31"

"He fretted that he did not know anything. He sighed, 'I have sought the Kingdom of God a little, the Squire has sought it terribly, but we haven't even a map, and after what I saw this afternoon, I know the Sioux are as barbarous as we are. Is it possible that nobody has ever known—that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years? ~ Ch. 33"

"Indians, of course, have no 'theology,' and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures. ~ Ch. 41"

"We should adopt Jesus boldly, and send missionaries to explain him to the whites, except that no Indian except one very old and sick and never much good in warfare would be pompous enough to tell alien peoples what he thinks they should believe. ~ Ch. 41"

"He had unhappily noticed at the mission that when he had most hotly prayed, it had been a way of escaping a decision, of frivolously passing the lot to God. ~ Ch. 50"

"I've sat at the preachers' feet and listened to them, faithfully, and tried to make myself become what they said I ought to be. I'm through! I do my own thinking now and my own bossing. ~ Ch. 51"

"It did seem sounder to build houses which he could build than to teach children a gospel which he did not altogether understand in a Sioux language which he could not quite speak. He reflected, 'If I could put over some kind of equality for Mark Shadrock and Black Wolf, that would be enough heavenly progress for me.' ~ Ch. 53"

"I don't believe in fear of divine vengeance, and I do believe in justice and equality.... ~ Ch. 57"

"An ugly woodshed that's there, right on the ground, is handsomer to me than a ten-story temple that isn't there. ~ Ch. 57"

"I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence. ~ Ch. 59"

"Sinclair Lewis was a crypto-sentimentalist and a slovenly writer who managed a slight falsification of life in order to move the reader."

"Sinclair Lewis knew about the crazed feeling that you get when people think you’re a pleasant person. You get all this praise for your good behavior but inside you’re seething."

"His central characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists, editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters."

"I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot."

"What was once Sinclair Lewis is buried in no ground. Even in life he was fully alive only in his writing. He lives in public libraries from Maine to California, in worn copies in the bookshelves of women from small towns who, in their girlhood, imagined themselves as Carol Kennicotts, and of medical men who, as youths, were inspired by Martin Arrowsmith."

"While I have never been of the majority that considers the Sinclair Lewis of Main Street and Babbitt a major novelist, I feel sad to report of Gideon Planish that I found it unimportant, sloppy, even dull. There is something endearing about Mr. Lewis as a writer that checks an entirely objective estimate of his recent work-perhaps his boyish idealism of which he is so boyishly ashamed, or the fact that his fictional creations seem so clearly to be aspects of his own many-faceted personality that one feels that to turn on him is to take unfair advantage of what he has been naïve enough to tell us about himself."

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

"I'm one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet. I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown."

"The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.""

"At one time, Washington actually meant something. But now, it's about as relevant as Bob Dylan's tuning fork."

"Joan Rivers telling Lauren Bacall her dress is all wrong is like Carrot Top telling Lenny Bruce he needs to get an edge."

"The American education system couldn't be more badly directed or poorly funded if the Secretary of Education were Ed Wood."

"I think the American legal system sucks worse than a Celine Dion cover version of "Whole Lotta Love.""

"[about the woman who sued McDonald's because her coffee was too hot] We have trouble convicting people who confess to murder, but this woman is able to take three mil off of McDonald's? If the judge had any common sense, the trial should have gone like this: "Will the defendant please rise? Yeah, it's your fault. You're stupid. Coffee is supposed to be hot. Why didn't you blow on it before you chugged it down like a pledge having his first beer? Get out of my courtroom you stupid, stupid woman. Take your pinstriped parasite lawyer with you. Next case!""

"Americans stick their nose where it doesn't belong more than Cyrano de Bergerac giving head."

"Then people ask me if I'm worried about the effects of global warming on my kids. Well, obviously I love my kids and I want them to live to be a 100. So that's another 1.8 degrees. My kids’ kids? Three point six. I'll just tell them we moved to Phoenix."

"We have now given one of the only 50 states we have to a herd of Simu-Bullwinkles!"

"For the foreseeable future, we're going to need oil products because I don't like the idea of hydrogen cars. I'm not sure I want to be cruising around a mall parking lot filled with a thousand mini-Hindenburgs."

"We're not allowed to do anything to nature anymore, except look at it. It's like porn with leaves."

"[T]he man who accused Richard Simmons of slapping him in an airport has dropped the assault charge. Dropped it! Upon hearing the news, Simmons sadly responded, "You mean I'm not going to prison?""

"I'm sorry, those pictures from the Abu Ghraib. At first, they, like infuriated me, I was sad. Then like, a couple days later, after they cut the guy's head off, they didn't seem like much. And now, I like to trade them with my friends."

"A new poll of Iraqis shows that more than half of them believe they would be safer if U.S. troops left their country. In a related story, more than half of Americans believe we would be safer if Iraqis stopped answering poll questions and helped us get their damn lights back on, OK? I love that story, a poll of Iraqis want us to leave."

"The Pentagon admitted the Iraqi was never given an identification number and that the Red Cross was never notified about his capture. However, [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld claims the prisoner has been treated in accordance with Geneva Conventions, including regular conjugal visits with his favorite goat."

"Forbes magazine has named Mel Gibson this year's most powerful celebrity. ... Forbes' least powerful celebrity? [Miller displayed the widely circulated image from the Lynndie England photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner with wires attached to his outstretched arms] You're looking at him. Screw this guy. ... [He's a] bad guy."

"South African schoolchildren set a world record this week by creating the world's longest clothesline. Hey, what do South Africans wash their clothes with? Apar-Tide!"

"The first half-dozen or so will be nice, but after that, I'm going to want a pro. (Referring to the Muslim concept of achieving 72 virgins upon arrival in heaven)."

"You know, folks, the French have always been reluctant to surrender to the wishes of their friends, and almost anticipatory in their urge to surrender to the wishes of their enemies."

"He's (Michael Moore) going to wake up every day for the rest of his life, and he's going to tell us how he hates everything about this country except his right to hate it. And then we say that we love it and he's going to tell us what naive sheep we are and that he's the true patriot because he hates it and he sees all the problems in it. Yeah, right, Mike. You know something, if my yawn got any bigger they'd have to assign it a hurricane name, okay? Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong."

"And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club."

"I don't have credibility, I'm a comedian. I'm not Ed Murrow up on the roof in a London fog reporting on the blitz."

"We should fight to preserve a country where people such as Michael Moore get to miss the point as badly as he misses it. Michael Moore represents everything I detest in a human being."

"What would Jesus drive?" I don't know about you, but I always picture my God having a driver. Well, Jesus would naturally have an SUV, cause He always had those twelve idiots hanging around, making Him change shit into food every four and a half minutes. "See the cigarette? It's a fish. Leave me alone."

"To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged Eustachian tube."

"Listen, the weather is just like Hillary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we?"

"Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking penguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dilemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?"

"Alanis Morissette and I actually used to date. I especially liked it when we went to the movies."

"That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism."

"I wrote "Eat It" because I wanted to buy a banana boat for Christmas. It worked."

"I have very mixed feelings about [Napster]. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!"

"What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?"

"I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's."

"Right now I'm listening to a lot of Top 40 music, because THAT'S MY JOB."

"Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don't make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely."

"If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."

"My brothers and sisters all hated me 'cause I was an only child."

"I'll never forget the first thing she said to me, she said: "Hey - you've got weasels on your face." Right then I knew it was true love."

"Look If you had one shot to sit on your lazy butt and watch all the TV you ever wanted until your brain turned to mush Would you go for it? or just let it slip? Yo"

"Shoppin' online for deals on some writable media I edit Wikipedia"

"I'm nerdy in the extreme Whiter than sour cream"

"I sued Taco Bell 'Cause I ate half a million Chalupas And I got fat! I sued Panasonic They never said I shouldn't use their microwave To dry off my cat!"

"Oh, you don't wanna mess with the R-I-double-A They'll sue you if you burn that CD-R It doesn't matter if you're a grandma, or a seven-year-old girl They'll treat you like the evil, hard-bitten, criminal scum you are"

"Never had a date That you couldn't inflate"

"We only torture the folks we don't like You're probably gonna be okay."

"I am Emperor Ronald Reagan Born again with fascist cravings Still, you made me president Human rights will soon go 'way I am now your today Now I command all of you Now you're going to pray in school I'll make sure they're Christian too ... You'll go quitely to boot camp They'll shoot you dead, make you a man Don't you worry, it's for a cause Feeding global corporations' claws Die on our brand new poison gas El Salvador or Afghanistan Making money for President Reagan And all the friends of President Reagan"

"Shut up, be happy. Obey all orders without question. The happiness you have demanded is now mandatory."

"Some day, even the experts will figure out, that crime is not caused by rap music...or even my music, but by a power structure of self-absorbed property owners so brain dead and stupid they won't even see that if you're too goddamn greedy to pay taxes for schools and services, they're not going to be any good any more! And that uneducated time bombs are a very poor investment as a future work force. And if you go on teaching people that life is cheap, and leave them to rot in ghettos and jails, they may one day feel justified in coming back to rob and kill you. Duh!"

"Jimi Hendrix once said, 'You will never hear surf music again.' Well, tonight, you will hear 'serf' music again -- S-E-R-F music."

""Buy my soda!" said the Moose Diarrhea Salesman. And we did. We all did. But when we got it home and opened up the package, it was not what they said it was. And rather than chucking it all and searching for something better, we're content with looking for another Moose Diarrhea Salesman."

"We on the left keep dividing ourselves into little splinter groups. "Anyone who isn't a vegetarian is automatically evil!" "Anyone who isn't an environmentalist wants to pollute the world!" "If you're not gay, then you must be homophobic!" "Look at me wrong? You're a racist!" "Wear lipstick? You can't be a feminist!" Divide, Divide, Divide, Divide, Divide! And while the left is all up their own asses with their little pet causes, the right comes in and takes control over that which is rightly everyone's. And speaking of splinters, most pathetic of all: "The only thing that matters in the entire universe is the punk rock scene! And you're an evil, sell-out traitor to the sacred punk rock scene if you disagree with anything I say, listen to music that I don't like, dress funny, dress normal, laugh without permission, or even so much as speak to another artist who ever made a dime off of their years of hard work without at least beating them up first!"...how pathetic is that? Every day, I walk from my home to the offices of Alternative Tentacles, and I lose count of the number of people, including entire families, holding up cardboard signs saying "Homeless: Will Work for Food"! Hard as it may be for some crybabies to believe, people in that situation could care less that "Green Day and The Offspring sold out when they signed to major labels."! Other things are more important!"

"Here we are at the gates of the great and powerful OZ! And we have come for your children! We are the REAL Politically Incorrect ! Our lives are not Charmed ! We WORK for a living! When was the last time [network television] admitted we even EXIST? Roseanne ? Sanford and Son ? Taxi ? [disgusted] Jerry Springer ! Our young people are NOT Teenage Witches! Nor are they Clueless! Fact is, they neither have NOR WANT ANYTHING in common with Dawson's Creek, Popular or Spoiled White Rich BABIES 90210 !"

"And we will NOT let Campbell's Soup, Old Navy, or anybody ELSE, HAMMER into the minds of girls as YOUNG as SIX YEARS OLD that they should ALWAYS hate their bodies and ALWAYS be on a diet!"

"Come, on, EMPTY-V!! [As] far as I'm concerned, Beavis and Butt-head and Dora (sic) are the only two good things you ever DID! [wild applause from audience] But can't you think of a better way to raise audience awareness of domestic violence, than to make it look COOL?"

"We don't need a flat tax, but a flattening tax, to truly level the playing field."

"Our biggest national security threat is the environmental destruction of our planet and the arms race with ourselves."

"I am an anarchist in my personal life. I try to live my life in a way that I don't need cops or baby-sitters to keep me from infringing on others. But I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other."

"What does it say about our country when people are so desperate for an alternative to our one-party state masquerading as a two-party state that they'll even elect a professional wrestler governor?"

"Don't hate the media, become the media."

"Ronald Reagan - "Grandpa Caligula"; "Ronald McReagan" - No More Coccoons"

"George H. W. Bush - "King George the 1st" - Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police"

"Bill Clinton - "Mr. Bill" - ibid."

"Al Gore - "Prince Albert" - Become the Media"

"George W. Bush - "King George the 2nd", "Cowboy 'Peabrain' Cornholio" - In the Grip of Official Treason"

"Dick Cheney - "Dick 'The Dick' Cheney", Dick Chinny"

"Condoleezza Rice - "CondolSleazea Rice" - ibid."

"John Ashcroft - "John Ashcrack" - ibid."

"Donald Rumsfeld - "Ronald Dumbsfeld" - ibid."

"Barack Obama - "BaRockstar O'Bummer" -"

"Let Saigons be bygones / Don't you blow this world in two."

""Poly" means more than one, and ticks are bloodsucking parasites."

"No lesbian left behind."

"Find what you like, and let it kill you."

"Mike: I'm Mike Chapman from homestarrunner.com! People are all the time asking me "Mike, how do you do those stupid voices for your dumb animal characters?" and I say "I'm Mike! Matt does the voices!" Let's go!"

"Matt: Having no plan and low expectations always makes the future look brighter."

"Matt: ... Expectations, keep 'em down. Ankle level."

"Television is a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well-done."

"Nothing in Moderation."

"As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them."

"What we kids didn't understand was that we were living in a commercial, commodity culture. Everything in our environment had been bought and sold. As middle class Americans, we basically grew up on a movie set. The conscious values that are pushed are only part of the picture. The medium itself plays a much bigger part than anyone realizes: the creation of illusion. We are living surrounded by illusion, by professionally created fairy tales. We barely have contact with the real world."

"About the only power you have is the power to discriminate. Living in a culture like this, you have to make choices and search out what has the most authentic content or substance. In the 1960s, while on LSD, I realized that my mind was a garbage receptacle of mass media images and input. I spent my whole childhood absorbing so much crap that my personality and mind are saturated with it. God only knows if that affects you physically! As a kid I became increasingly interested in earlier periods of culture. I turned into a little nostalgia boy, and I became steeped in the Our Gang fantasy from watching them on TV. So much so, that my speech patterns were affected. The style of those Our Gang comedies was so charming that I started acting and talking like Jackie Cooper and Alfalfa. They had these cute kids, artificial mannerisms. It must have been embarrassing for people to hear me talk like that."

"I took some bad acid in November of 1965, and the after effect left me crazy and helpless for six months. My mind would drift into a place that was very electrical and crackly, filled with harsh, abrasive, low grade, cartoony, tawdry carnival visions. There was a nightmarish mechanical aspect to everyday life. My ego was so shattered, so fragmented that it didn't get in the way during what was the most unself-conscious period of my life. I was kind of on automatic pilot and was still constantly drawing. Most of my popular characters—Mr. Natural, Flaky Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Eggs Ackley, The Snoid, The Vulture Demonesses, Av' n' Gar, Shuman the Human, the Truckin' guys, Devil Girl—all suddenly appeared in the drawings in my sketchbook in this period, early 1966. Amazing! I was relieved when it was finally over, but I also immediately missed the egoless state of that strange interlude. LSD put me somewhere else. I wasn't sure where. All I know is, it was a strange place. Psychedelic drugs broke me out of my social programming. It was a good thing for me, traumatic though, and I may have been permanently damaged by the whole thing, I'm not sure. I see LSD as a positive, important life experience for me, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else."

"I was totally amazed. This little home made underground comix thing was turning into a business before my eyes. It went from us going around Haight Street trying to sell these things we had folded and stapled ourselves to suddenly being a business with distributors, lawyers, contracts, and money talk. … The whole thing began to take on a heaviness that I believe had a negative effect on my work. I was only twenty-five years old when all this happened. It was a case of "too much too soon," I think. I became acutely self-conscious about what I was doing. Was I now a "spokesman" for the hippies or what? I had no idea how to handle my new position in society! … Take Keep On Truckin'... for example. Keep on Truckin'... is the curse of my life. This stupid little cartoon caught on hugely. … I didn't want to turn into a greeting card artist for the counter-culture! I didn't want to do 'shtick'—the thing Lenny Bruce warned against. That's when I started to let out all my perverse sex fantasies. It was the only way out of being "America's Best Loved Hippie Cartoonist.""

"Before industrial civilization, local and regional communities made their own music, their own entertainment. The esthetics were based on traditions that went far back in time—i.e. folklore. But part of the con of mass culture is to make you forget history, disconnect you from tradition and the past. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes it can even be revolutionary. But tradition can also keep culture on an authentic human level, the homespun as opposed to the mass produced. Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses its fertility, like worn out, ravaged farmland. Eventually, the yokels who bought the hype, the pitch, they want in on the game. When there are no more naive hicks left, you have a culture where everybody is conning each other all the time. There are no more earnest "squares" left—everybody's "hip", everybody is cynical."

"I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now."

"People have no idea of the sources for my work. I didn't invent anything; It's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes."

"The fine art world and the commercial art industry are both all about money. It's hard to say which is more contemptible: the fine art world with its double talk and pretensions to the cultural high ground, or the world of commercial art trying to sell to the largest mass market it can reach. A serious artist really shouldn't be too deeply involved in either of these worlds. It's best to be on the fringe of them. In general, if you want to be a success and make the money, you have to play the game. It's no different in the fine art world, it's just a slightly different game. Essentially, you're marketing an illusion. It's much easier to lie to humans and trick them than to tell them the truth. They'd much rather be bamboozled than be told the truth, because the way to trick them is to flatter them and tell them what they want to hear, to reinforce their existing illusions. They don't want to know the truth. Truth is a bring-down, a bummer, or it's just too complicated, too much mental work to grasp."

"My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge."

"What the hell is this?? Who can tell me?? Does anybody know?? How can I find out more about it?? One thing's sure: the human mind can't "know" it...why does one want to "know"?? Is it a quest for "freedom"? One no longer wishes to be a puppet dancing on the strings of...of what? Animal instincts?? Learned reflexes? Programmed behavior?? Ingrained habits of perception?? How limited are we by the experience of our senses, by our physical nature?? To be fully alive is a stupendous struggle! We want the rewards without the struggle--- ---a fatal error! ...No such thing as an easy life! Everybody has a hard time...struggle or die! To find out what's really going on it's necessary to get around the ego..an art requiring persistent and determined effort...Me, me, me...myself & I...oh no!!! Trapped in my stupid self!"

"I never had a strategy in my dealing with other humans! I've always been very passive socially. I went along with their agenda. I had none of my own! Left to my own devices I stayed in my room or wandered aimlessly in the streets, fantasizing about bizarre things I yearned to do to big ladies, or filled with self-pity and resentment. I was helpless in the presence of other people! My main concern was to make them like me by being as agreeable as possible, and secondly to impress them with my brilliance, my sharp wit, my originality, and my fundamental saintliness. Over time, and after years—decades—of diligent practice, I became very good at this cute little performance of mine. But this performance was improvised in the moment, catered to suit whoever I happened to be with. There was no strategy. It was always an effort. Only in solitude was I completely relaxed. Funny thing..."

"I'm such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don't know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise, their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down! I despise modern popular music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves—the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck it up. … I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body—I hate my body. … Nature is horrible. It's not cute and lovable. It's kill or be killed. … How I hate the courting ritual! I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth, never left me alone. … I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never fully succeed in this endeavor. I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It's all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children. Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate. I hate the way humans worship power—one of the most disgusting of all human traits. I hate the human tendency toward revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant. I hate all the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel suffocated. I want to flee from it. For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror."

"As a matter of survival I've created this anti-hero alter-ego, a guy in an ill-fitting suit—part humunculus and part clown. Yep, that's me alright … I could never relate to heroes. I have no interest in drawing heroic characters. It's not my thing, man. I'm more inclined toward the sordid underbelly of life. I find it more interesting to draw grotesque, lurid, or absurd pictures, and I especially enjoy depicting my fevered sexual obsessions."

"My work has a strong negative element. I have my own inner demons to deal with. Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I can't otherwise grasp. What I don't want to do, what I dread more than anything, is to leave a legacy of crap. I don't want my work to be tossed in the dustbin of history, and become more of the second rate, mediocre junk that future connoisseurs will have to move out of the way so they can get at the good stuff."

"Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances."

"When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate."

"I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn't like other boys. I knew I was more fearful. I didn't like the rough and tumble most boys were into. I knew I was a sissy."

"I wasn’t that passionate about it [the radical counterculture]. I agreed with it, but at the political demonstrations I would get very nervous when people started chanting in unison. I didn’t like that. I usually disliked those smash-the-state kind of guys, even though I agreed politically with them. I took LSD, I said “groovy” and “far-out,” but I was kind of a detached observer."

"I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out."

"For a while I was most well known for that [the Janis Joplin album cover], and for “Keep on Truckin’.” That was a drawing that came out of LSD trips, and the words came from a Blind Boy Fuller song from 1935. I drew it in my sketchbook and then for Zap. It sort of caught the popular imagination. It became a horrible popular thing."

"I was never as cocksure again after that first LSD inspiration. Especially with fame and reputation. You become very uncertain, you have to follow your own act. I never did get that kind of spontaneous cocksureness back again. It’s like going from being the observer to the observed. I had been used to being invisible when I was young. After I became well-known, it was very hard to be anonymous in the world. Of course, at first I liked all the attention. Suddenly, good-looking girls were interested in me! Wow! I couldn’t believe it."

"I’m an outsider. I will always be an outsider."

"The giant female bodybuilder proves unthinking people wrong who believe feminine beauty can never be harmonious with well developed musculature."

"As a woman with a big ass, I’ve always liked Robert Crumb. Those who are familiar with Crumb’s art only in passing will know him for the big, sturdy, sexualized women he drools over in his comics. “Nice big legs!” one drawing reads, next to an arrow pointing to some nice, big legs. Crumb draws himself as a paltry little nerd, sometimes clinging to the legs of an enormous woman, his eyes hidden completely behind bottle-bottom glasses. Flecks of saliva tend to fly across the paradigmatic Crumb page."

"Crumb’s comics are, to be frank, kind of sexist. He has also at times used racist imagery in his comics, to satirical but nonetheless unpleasant effect. The goddesses he manufactures are powerful but they’re not human. They’re iron buttocks, straining shirts. But Kominsky-Crumb is a person, and she draws through the experience of being desired by and desiring Robert Crumb. In this sense, the show is engaging and delightful but also, in a mutual kind of way, redemptive."

"I'd like to start off this show by asking you all a question, cause I don't know the answer. Uh, I lost my sunglasses and yesterday I went to the Sunglass Hut. Here's the question: Why does a pair of sunglasses cost more than a 25-inch color television set? I go to the Sunglass Hut. I see a pair that I like. I don't love them. I don't. I like 'em. $309. And I asked the guy, very politely, "How do you sleep at night, ya little prick?" [audience cheers] You know what I mean? Always just wonderin'. And I told him--and this is true--that two weeks ago, I bought a 25" color television set from Wal-Mart for $218. And he goes, "Well, apparently, sir, you don't get it." "...I'm listenin'." He goes, "These glasses block 100% of all UV rays." I'm like, "No, apparently you don't get it; this thing decodes a digital satellite signal it picks up from outer-fucking-space!" [audience cheers] And then it turned out the glasses got basic cable and I felt like a dickhead..."

"You ever take a crap so big, your pants fit better? Anybody ever do that? You ever...I'm hoping that happens to me later tonight, 'cause these babies don't fit anymore. I'm hoping I'm one big turd away from backing into an old wardrobe."

"Yesterday, I was sitting on a beanbag chair naked, eating Cheetos and...[audience cheers], I was flippin' through the television and I saw Robert Tilton. He's a televangelist from Dallas, and uh, he was staring at me. And he said this. He said, "Are you lonely?" [shrugs] Yeah. "Have you spent half your life in bars, pursuing sins of the flesh?" [Takes a sip of his drink] This guy's good! "Are you sitting in a beanbag chair, naked, eating Cheetos?" [shocked look] YES, SIR! "Do you feel the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?" Close! I thought he was talking about me there for a second! Apparently, I ain't the only cat on the block that digs Cheetos."

"I was flying from Flagstaff, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona because my manager doesn't own a globe. We flew on a plane that big. Like a pack of gum with eight people in it. [imitates sound of a tiny airplane]. What happened was we took off from the Flagstaff Airport, Hair Care and Tire Center there. We're traveling at half the speed of smell. We got passed by a kite. There was a goose behind us, and the pilot was screaming, "Go around!". We get halfway to Phoenix and we gotta go back. It's a 9-minute flight...can't pull it off with this equipment. We had engine trouble. We lost some oil pressure and they take told us about it over the speaker system of the plane, which was stupid because they coulda just went [looks backward] "Hey, we lost some oil pressure." [gives a thumbs-up] "Heard ya! Sure did." It was weird. Everybody on the plane was nervous, but I'd been drinking since lunch, so I was like, "Take it down, I don't give a shit." You ever have one of those days? "Hit somethin' hard, I don't wanna limp away from this piece of shit." The guy sitting next to me is losing his mind. Apparently, he had a lot to live for. He goes "Hey man! [gasps for air] Hey, man! Hey, man! [gasps for air] If one of these engines fails, [gasps for air] how far will the other one take us?" [As himself]"All the way to the scene of the crash! Which is pretty handy, 'cause that's where we're headed. I bet we beat the paramedics there by a half-hour! We're haulin' ass!""

"The DeBeers people are almost saying what they really mean. You remember the old DeBeers slogan, "Diamonds are forever." Then they changed it to "This year, take her breath away." The new slogan is "Diamonds. Render her speechless." Why don't they just come out and say it: "Diamonds. That'll shut her up... for a minute.""

"[on vegetarianism] I didn't climb to the top of the fuckin' food chain to eat carrots."

"I get that Speedo on, it looks like a rubber band stretched over a head of cauliflower."

"Have you ever seen a healthy-looking vegetarian? They look like shit! They're all gaunt and yellow. After a while, their bodies become intolerant of other things. I'll give you an example: I was out to lunch with a comedian friend of mine, and later in the day he said, and I quote: "I feel nauseous and I have a headache. That soup I had must have had beef broth in it." Your system's kickin' back broth? You're a manly man, aren't you?"

"I've been through two hurricanes; I was in Hurricane Carla as a kid in Houston, and I was really excited during hurricane time, because you're out there on the Gulf and it's dangerous, and I was like, "This is cool!" Till shit started hitting our house, then I was like, "FUCK THIS!""

"They evacuated everybody from the (Florida) Keys and everybody leaves except for one guy who’s gonna stay there and tie himself to a tree on the beach, to prove a point; and the point was, he said, that at 53 years of age, he was in good enough physical condition to withstand the wind and the rain of a force 3 hurricane. OK, let me explain something to ya: it isn’t that the wind is blowin’. It’s what the wind is blowin’. If you get hit with a Volvo, it doesn’t really matter how many sit-ups you did that morning. If you have a "Yield" sign in your spleen, joggin' don't really come into play. "I can run 25 miles without stopping." "You're bleedin'." "Shit!""

"One time, I was watching a shootout live on CNN, and it went on for so long that the criminal eventually shot himself. And the cops are complaining by saying, "He's got on body armor, he's got on body armor!" And I'm thinking, "I can see his head! Shoot him in his fuckin' head!""

"You ever see tape of the Kehoe brothers from Ohio, those two guys that get out of that white Suburban, it's been on Cops a few times? Those guys, folks, have a shootout with the police, at point...blank...range—nobody gets hurt. I would love to have been at that office the next day when that guy's being interviewed by the police. "And then what happened?" "Well, at that point, I unloaded my semi-automatic 9 millimeter weapon at point blank range." "And then what happened?" "They...left." Nice shooting, Elmer Fudd. There was a kid in Detroit a few years ago, shot 8 bullets, hit 9 people. These cops fired 22 shots, didn't even hit the fuckin' Suburban!"

"Some friends of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a strip club, and I didn't...want to go. But I ended up going, 'cause—back me up on this, fellas—once you've seen one woman naked, you...wanna see the rest of 'em naked. It can be an old biker chick, you know they're gonna hang down to here. "Wanna see my titties!?" "Yeah, I do!" [cringes] "All right, that's enough, roll 'em back up!" [imitates her rolling her breasts back up and sealing them in place.] The things that make you go [shudders]"

"I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party."

"I didn't get where I am today by worryin' about how I'd feel tomorrow."

"My wife's cooking's gotten a lot better since she learned the smoke alarm wasn't a timer. I had to tell her, "Honey, the food's done before that particular buzzer goes off!""

"I got happily married to a rich woman. If you ever have a choice, go ahead. Actually, she's not rich at all. Her parents are loooooaaaddddeeeed. And they hate my guuuuuuuuuuutttttsss. And I am waitng for them to diiiiiiiieeeeeeee. And you will know when they die, 'cause you will never see my fat ass again."

"I never had much of a vocabulary. In fact, my friend Bob Schneider would still be alive today if I'd known the difference between "antidote" and "anecdote". He got bitten by a copperhead, and I'm telling him funny stories out of Reader's Digest. His head started to swell, I said "This ain't working". He goes, "READ FASTER!!""

"I'm a dog lover. Actually, I love my dog, I don't give a shit about your dog. I don't know your dog. Your dog could be an asshole, I don't know."

"I like to keep the inside of the house between 70 and 75 degrees. My ex-wife liked to keep the inside of the house between 75 and a hundred and fuckin' ten. And you can't keep Tater Salad at that temperature."

"She and I got into another argument about the temperature of the dwelling and she took a butcher knife and slashed the tires on my truck. So I dug up an old Polaroid of her and entered it in Hustlers "Beaver Hunt" contest and she won. And I used the money to buy me some new tires, and she super-glues my dick to my stomach, so you see how things get out of hand? [scratches himself in the middle of the chest] Still itches."

"[imitating his cousin Ray on hunting deer] "Well, it was 4 in the mornin'. 22 degrees outside. 'Course, you weren't there...pussy. I'm in a camouflage deer blind, with grease paint on my face. I've got had deer urine on my boots—I'm not sure why. [as himself] I made that part up. [returns to imitating Ray] I've got a .30-06 rifle with a 12 power-scope and a bullet that'll travel at 2,500 feet per second. When that deer looked up to lick the salt sucker I'd hung from the danged ol' tree...caught him right above the eye." "Yeah? Well, I hit one with a van, goin' 55 miles an hour, with the headlights on and the horn blowin'!" Woo, that's an elusive little creature! If you ever miss one, it's because the bullet's moving too fast. Slow the bullet down to 55 miles an hour, put some headlights and a little horn on it, the deer will actually jump in front of the bullet!"

"One time, my wife said to me, [imitating his wife] "Honey, the dryer is broken." [as himself] Did you check the lint trap? [imitating his wife with a clueless face] Sit down, honey, I'll check it. [as his wife] "Was there anything in there?" [as himself] There's a quilt in there. Look! You made a sofa cushion."

"I bought this big two-story custom van back when I was married. I forgot to tell you this, it was getting kinda cool, it had the James Bond couch in the back, when you push a button, the couch automatically turns into a bed, and I was like, "Well, that's cool." I finally got something over those Mercedes-Benz-driving in-laws of mine, you know what I mean? When I first bought the van, I was real proud of it. I took it straight over to my brother-in-law's house to show it off, 'cause he's such a prick. He takes one look at my new van and he goes [in snobbish accent] "I can't believe you didn't buy a Mercedes-Benz." They don't make a van. "Ron, I don't think you fully understand the intricacies of Mercedes-Benz engineering. Why, I got the three-inch windshield wiper that keeps my headlight clean in a rainstorm." I got a place to fuck your sister. I don't know why they didn't like me."

"In Texas, we have the death penalty and we use it! That's right. You come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back! That's our policy. They're trying to pass a bill right now through the Texas legislature that will speed up the process of execution in heinous crimes where there's more than 3 credible eyewitnesses. That means that if three or more people saw you do what you did, you don't sit on Death Row for 15 years, Jack! You go straight to the front of the line. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My state's putting in the express lane!"

"There was this one crime I read about that was so heinous, I didn't have any words for it. This guy had killed a girl, her mother, and her grandmother without provocation. I mean, I am so pissed off reading this, steam's coming out of my ears. This guy was put on trial and was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. Then, about a week before the execution, a group of people stood up on his behalf, ON HIS BEHALF, to say, "We can't kill him. He's too crazy to know we're killing him!"...So what are we arguing about? If he doesn't know the difference and it makes me sleep better at night..."

"So we're trying to breed Sluggo and get pick of the litter, so we put him with the female dog for a week. And to make sure it takes, we take him to the vet and they do the artificial insemination, and now it don't take shit to get Sluggo to go to the vet! So the last time we go there, the lady says, "Mr. White, if you'll just come with me, I'll show you how to do this, so next time you don't have to bring the dog, you can just bring the sperm." And I'm like [laughing] "No, you go ahead and jack off the dog, he follows me around too much as it is." He'll be following me around like, "Jack me off! Jack me off! You did it once!" Do it yourself. "I don't have any thumbs. [sobbing] I don't have any goddamn thumbs! Now jack me off, you piece of shit!" [feigned shock] Do we talk to Daddy like that? "Please? Please, jack me off, you piece of shit, I don't have any goddamn thumbs."...I've lost my mind."

"She got convinced in her crazy head that I had sex with this girl in Columbus, Ohio...and I did, and I'll tell you why. When you enter into a monogamous relationship with somebody, you usually do it at a point in the relationship when you're having a lot of sex. So you're willing to sign the papers. "I'll only have sex with you, ever-ever-ever...ever." Well, if that person stops having sex altogether... why, you find yourself in quite a pickle. I'm a pretty good dog, but if you don't pet me every once in awhile, it's hard to keep me under the porch. I'm not as flexible as real dog. And I'll tell you what happened, too. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I haven't been laid in three months. Three months! You can't go three months without having sex with me. I'll go have sex with somebody else. I know, I've seen me do it. I did a show one night. I came offstage, there's gorgeous woman, maybe 35, 40 years old, long black dress, slit up to her waist, GORGEOUS. Gimme a second. Just...And I walk off stage, she goes, "I thought you were hilarious. I wanna buy you a drink." I'm like, "I can't do that, I'm married." And she says, "I didn't ask if you wanna have sex, big boy. I asked if you wanna have a drink at my place."...Alright. Now, you know of that little guy that sits on your shoulder and reminds you of your prior commitments and your moral fortitude? I didn't hear a peep out of that guy. He hadn't been laid in 3 months either. He was speechless for like 20 minutes then he was like, "Suck her titty!"..."I was gonna!" I was having a 3-way with my conscience. Soon as the whole thing's over, he's back at his post, saying, "That was wrong, mister!" "Hey! 15 minutes ago, you were beating off on my shoulder, monkey boy!" I hate him. He smokes pot. He burned a hole in my other jacket."

"I promised Sears I would tell this story on stage every night till the lawsuit's settled. I had my van down at Savannah, Georgia, didn't like the way the tires were wearing on it. I took the van to Sears Automotive, "A trusted name in automotive service." Takes them 3-and-a-half hours to change four tires. Apparently, they had to whittle one of them out of a piece of wheat. I pay them $980 of MY hard-earned money, I take a right-hand turn out of the mall, the left-rear wheel falls off. It falls OFF. It FALLS THE FUCK OFF. Turning my van into a tripod, spinning me into a dimension of "pissed off" I've never been in before in my life!"

"I got thrown out of a bar in New York City. Now when I say I got thrown out of a bar, I don't mean someone asked me to leave, and we walked to the door together, and I said, "Bye, everybody, I gotta go." Six bouncers hurled my ass out of a nightclub like I was a Frisbee. Those big ol' New York bouncers who thinks bouncing's a cool job. They just talk about bouncing. They get together with other bouncers and talk about bouncing. They go home and watch Roadhouse and beat off. [mentally deficient voice] "Patrick Swayze's hittin' another guy! [laughs stupidly]" for wearing a hat. I walk in a bar with a hat on; this guy, real pissy, goes "Take off the hat!" [proceeds to mock-flex, looking much like a gorilla] I'm like, "What's the deal?" "I'll tell you what the deal is- faggots in this area wear hats and we're trying to keep 'em out of our club." I was like, "Oh really? The only way we can tell down in Texas is if they have a haircut like...yours." And he got all pissed. Anyway, I took off the hat, and he walked away. About an hour later, I was drinking and I forgot. You ever forget? It happened to me. I put the hat back on, now, I'm between 6'1" and 6'6", depending on which convenience store I'm leaving, and I weigh about 235 lbs, and this guy is pokin' me on the shoulder with two fingers. He said, "That's it, you're outta here!" I said, "I don't think so, Scooter." And I was wrong. They hurled me out of that night club, and then they decided to square off with me in the parking lot. But I backed down 'cause I didn't know how many of them it was going to take to whip my ass, but I knew how many they were going to use. That's a handy piece of information to have, right there; overkill."

"Let me tell you what I'm looking for in a fuckin' tree. I'm looking for a tree that you can tell is alive even if you don't know shit about trees."

"The next time you have a thought...let it go."

"I'm sweating scotch out of every pore in my body."

"You know, one of the most-asked questions I get on my website, tatersalad.com, is "How come you aren't more involved in Blue Collar Television?" You know, that's the show Jeff, Larry and Bill do. I'll tell you why—it's because of my work ethic. My grandfather once said, "That boy's got a lot of quit in him," and that's true. Hell, the things I didn't quit, I got kicked out of. I got kicked off the high school debate team for saying "Yeah?! Well, fuck you!" I thought I'd won. The other kid was speechless. I thought that was what we were tryin' to do."

"If I could give advice to the planet, it would be; don't marry for looks alone, going either way, and I'll tell you why. In a few years, if Barbara's boobs start to sag too much, there's a place you can go where they can just lift 'em right back up to where they were. And they can point the nipple wherever they want 'em. You can actually go to a titty bar, pick out a set of titties and say, "I want those titties on that woman right there." If her belly gets too big and she don't wanna work it off, you can go get a tummy tuck- they'll give you a belly that looks like a cheerleader. You know, if your eyes start to go bad, you can have Lasik surgery and they can give you 20/20 vision at any age. If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that'll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something, folks...you can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take, there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is fo-evah."

"My manager will send me anywhere he wants to, 'cause he doesn't have to fuckin' go."

"My last stop was in Anchorage, Alaska, which is real handy and a great place to visit in February if you...if you get the chance. After that, I went to Fairbanks, Alaska, and my manager's prediction that there wouldn't be a lot of snow in Fairbanks, Alaska in February was off by about seven and a half fucking FEET! THE most boring town I've ever been to in my life. Sorry if you're from there. It is a bore-hole. And I was stranded there for THREE DAYS. Count 'em, one...tick...[pauses and looks at his watch]...tock...tick...Stranded there with the Eskimo people. Not a great looking group of folks. And I mentioned that onstage and they got pissed off. And I didn't see why they got so mad. I didn't insinuate that they had no character, I mentioned that they weren't attractive...I thought they knew. Apparently, I let some big cat out of the bag. Have you seen their teeth? They can make keys. You don't have to be in Fairbanks very long before you learn what that nose rubbing deal's all about. I'm good. Anyway, I got this scathing letter from the head Eskimo, Frosty or whatever his name was, and halfway through the letter he said he would have me know that the Inuit tribe is one of the purest races on the planet and I'm like, "That's kinda what I'm talkin' about. Nobody will have sex with these people." And then later in the letter it said there are less Inuits every year, which I guess means it's getting to where where they won't even have sex with each other."

"On my way to Alaska, somebody suggested that I watch this movie, which I did. It's called Grizzly Man, and if you get a chance, watch it. It's very entertaining. It's about this guy, a never-do-well out-of-work-actor, who tries to reinvent himself as a filmmaker, and he goes to "grizzly land" and shoots this amazing footage, which was later compiled by Werner Herzog. And, about halfway through the movie, this guy snaps and thinks he's at one with the grizzly bears, and grizzly bears, he says, not only have the capacity for intellect, they have the capacity for sympathy...and then one of them eats him...FUNNIEST movie I've ever seen in my life. I laughed 'till I thought I was going to throw up! [Mimics laughing uproariously] "The bear ate him! That's rich!" And I wondered if this guy's dad, like my dad, ever said to him, "You're never gonna be shit!" [Audience laughs] "Well, you're wrong, poppa. Tomorrow morning, when this bear pushes me through his bowels, I'll be a steaming pile of bear-shit. I hope you're proud, daddy. You have no idea what I had to go through to make your dreams come true. I had to be digested. You know what that's like, daddy? I suppose you don't.""

"I was more fucked-up than Courtney Love at the Pamela Anderson roast!"

"I told him, "We're all gay. It's just to what extent are you gay." He says, "That's bullshit, man, I ain't gay at all!" I'm like, "Yeah, you are and I'll prove it." He goes, "Fine, prove it." I'm like, "All right, do you like porn?" He says, "Yeah, I love porn, you know that." I'm, "Oh, o you only watch two women together?" He goes, "No, I'll watch a man and a woman making love." I said, "Oh, do you like the guy to have a tiny, half-flaccid penis?" He said, "No, I like big, hard, throbbing co- (stunned pause, applause) ...I did not know that about myself.""

"I found out yesterday there really is a place called Bumfuck, Egypt. And the only way to get there is to go up Shit Creek."

"The Ayatollah of Iran died today and they're desperately trying to find the next Ayatollah. I suggested they pick that guy they just kicked out of the Oak Ridge Boys. Ayatollah Oom Papa Mow Mow!"

"I got 2 Scottish terriers, because if you drink enough Johnny Walker products, eventually they'll just send you the dogs. And we got another 200 head of Scotties on a little ranch in Wyoming. We got little monkey cowboys in hats and vests, riding Shetland ponies, with little toy guns...one of them's the sheriff. Cutest thing you ever saw. No, but I do have 2 little Scottish terriers and their names are Birdy and Bogey, and someone said to me, "Oh, that's cute, they're named after your golf game." I said, "No, if they were named after MY golf game, they'd be called Double Bogey and Where The Fuck Is That Ball Going?, which is kind of a long name for a pet."

"One day, I was picking up dog turds on my front yard, and I realized something: there are 6 people who work for me full-time, so I'm slowly reevaluating everybody's position at Ron White Inc., so that next time, I won't have to be the dog-turd-picker-upper. It's a tie between my pool boy and my tax attorney...and I'm leaning towards the tax attorney. But as I'm picking up these turds, I see one that's massive, even by Sluggo's standards, which are legendary, and I know it's his, because he outshits the Scotties 2-to-1. I'm looking at this turd – I'm admiring it, really – and I begin to think there's lettering on the side of it. I go in the house and get my glasses, because I can't read shit without my glasses. [Audience laughs] And it does. It says "Midland Park Golf Course". Sluggo had eaten and shat whole a golf glove, velcro and all...I rinsed it off and been using it for three weeks."

"I decided last week that there are too many support groups in this country; you need to pick your own self up and go, you know? I saw this commercial last week, it was for a bladder control awareness group. I'm like, let me explain something to you: if you have a bladder control problem, you're probably aware of it. Or you're in some weird-ass denial I've never even heard of, you know? "Bob, I got a moisture problem in this area, and I don't know if it's condensation due to high humidity, or if I'm pissin' myself.""

"Well, I'll tell you a little bit about myself, uh, my brother's a doctor and my sister's an attorney, and I hate Thanksgiving. Last year, we're sitting around the dining room table, and my brother tells a story about all the neat lives he's saved. My sister tells a story about winning a lawsuit for an orphanage to help the children. Then my mom goes, (archly) "Well, Ron? Is there anything new with your career?" And I go, "Yeah! I got a new bit about sticking my pecker in a toaster!" Maybe I should've told my story first."

"I'd like to start off by telling you some great news. I got approved for a new reality show—it's an extreme makeover show for middle-aged lesbians, called "This Old Bull-Dyke". We already have a sponsor, too–Wolverine steel-toed boots has picked it up. We had another title, but the censors nixed it; it was originally going to be called, "Pimp My Muff!""

"I'm staying tonight, or this week, in the Hotel 1000, and I would like to talk for just a second about their toilets. They've got the best toilets ever, man. They're amazing, you won't believe this if you've never seen one of these. Number one, the seat is heated. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you're used to a cold toilet seat and then you sit on a warm toilet seat, it's nice. It, like, relaxes your bowel muscles and kinda just helps you crap, you know? It's really nice. And then, on the wall, there's some buttons and one of them says Rear Cleansing and one of them says Front Cleansing; there's a diagram of a guy sitting on a toilet with a stream of water shooting up his ass. So I push a button...and all of a sudden I'm that guy! I am. I'm sitting on the toilet with a stream of water shooting up my ass, and it's amazing...how accurate this thing is. I don't know if everybody's butthole is in the exact same place, but this thing has got me dead cen–ter! And then there's another button below that button that says Oscillate and I said, "Why NOT?" Now I have a rotating stream of water shooting up my ass, and it was at that moment that I realized that 50 million gay men can't be wrong! [audience cheers] I'm singing songs to this toilet, I'm in love! [singing] "I honestly love you..." My wife caught me spreading cake on my ass, just so I could go wash it off. "Is that cake?!" "No, I gotta go to the bathroom...don't wait up.""

"I'm gonna try telling you this story. This happened on Tuesday. I'm going home from PetSmart in the car with two dogs and the wife, and the wife says, "I need to stop at the bank," and I say, "Shit" or whatever the hell I say because I don't go to the bank. Everybody knows that; I stay in the car with the dogs. My wife said, "I'll be, you know, 5 minutes," but there's absolutely no such thing as 5 minutes with this woman. So, she goes in. And I know my dogs need to pee, and at our bank, there's one piece of manicured lawn that has two signs that both say No Dogs...so I take my dogs over there. This guy comes waddling out of the bank with a big scowl on his face and he says, "The sign says 'no dogs'!" I said, "Well, the sign's wrong. The sign should say, 'two dogs'.""

"I got in a little trouble. Did you guys hear anything about that? [audience cheers] I'll tell you what happened. I had two sold-out shows in Fort Pierce, Florida and we were gonna land in Vero Beach, Florida. And I have an airplane that, um, you guys...bought me. Thank you. It's nice. It is really cool. And we land in Vero Beach, and where we land, I look out the window and there's three cops standing there, which is no big deal to me. Because cops love me, so do firemen. And a lot of times, I'll get a police escort from the airport to the venue, and this...wasn't one of those times. I got outta the plane and there was a cop there and he said, "Mr. White, we have been told there are drugs on this plane by an anonymous tip." I said, "There are absolutely no drugs on the plane." Now, I did have a bit of weed in my bag, but it's not on the plane, so technically I'm not lying to this guy. And, you know, he goes, "Well, do you mind if we search the aircraft?" I said, "You absolutely cannot search this aircraft unless you have probable cause," because I still have civil liberties, you know what I mean? [audience cheers] I do. And they tell me, "Okay, we just wanna let the drug dog walk by it a couple times." I said, "Fine". And the drug dog walks by a couple times, and the guy goes, "Well, the dog gave us the signal that there are drugs on the plane". And I was like, "No, he didn't! That dog didn't do anything, I was staring straight at it! He didn't wink, blink, woof or paw. What's his signal, a blank stare? (mimes a blank stare) That's all he did!" "Well, the dog says there are drugs on the plane." And I said, "Well, I said there aren't drugs on the plane. Who are you going to believe, me or the...ah, fuck, never mind." Now, I've got a show to go to. They spend an hour and a half going through this plane. An hour and a half and I'm just sitting there going, "Oh, come on!" And they get finished and, of course, there are no drugs on the plane and I knew there wasn't. And I assume now they're gonna let me go and I'll go do my show, whatever. And then they go, "Well, now the dog needs to sniff that bag on your shoulder," and I was like, (Scooby Doo voice) "Ruh-roh!" They found 7/8 of a gram of marijuana in my bag. Now, when I have have 7/8 of a gram of marijuana, I consider myself to be...out of marijuana. That is no weed."

"It was medicinal marijuana. It was prescribed to me by a doctor in California, which is where I live, and I told the cop this. When I went to see the doctor, he asked me, "Do you have any medical problems that medicinal marijuana helps alleviate?" And I said, "Well, I get bummed when I run out of weed...medicinal marijuana cures that." They handcuffed me and put me in the squad car, and take me to jail. Now, I'm not being an ass about it. I broke the law, that's fine, but, fuck, this is Florida! These cops drove by three meth labs and a dead hooker just to get here!"

"They processed me through county jail. Now, for whatever reason, I had a bunch of cash on me. I'd been on the road for a while. And now they gotta count it in front of me, and this guy comes over and he goes. [redneck accent] "Hey, man, I'm gonna have to count that money and you're gonna have to watch". And I'm like [sarcastic] "Fuck, not you." This money is in banded $5,000 stacks and this guy picks one of them up and goes [slowly flipping each bill] "One Mississippi. Two--". He didn't really say Mississippi but he fuckin' could have. "Two Mississippi..." and I go, "You can't do it that way. It'll take forever. Just take the band off and start counting. One-two-three-four-five. When you get to 50, that's 5,000 and just start the next stack." And he goes, "That's a good idea". That's what he said. So he counts the second stack and he goes "Hey, buddy, wait a minute! Wait a minute! There's only 42 in this one." I said, "Oh, that's okay. Just get 8 more outta this one, put it in this one. Now you have two stacks of 50. That's $10,000." I'M TEACHING THIS MOTHER FUCKER HOW TO COUNT!"

"I'm standing in line. I got a first class ticket. And I get up to the front of the line and there isn't anybody there. It's just a kiosk with a computer terminal. And I'm not good at computers. And I don't wanna touch this thing, 'cause it's got grease and dirt and what I only pray to Jesus is meringue."

"I get to Atlanta and I check into the Ritz Carlton Hotel. And, uh, the next morning I go to take a shower and there's no hot water. And I called the front desk and I tell the girl at the front desk, I said there's no hot water. The girl at the front desk said "Sometimes there's no hot water"..."Didn't I just tell you that?" I said "I've stayed at $20 a night motels. The water was so hot you could cook your nuts with it." She goes "Well, every once in a while, everybody will wake up at the same time and they all take a shower at the same time and we run smack outta hot water." "You guys didn't think about that? They thought about it at the Motel 6. But that whole concept of people wake up in the morning with shit to do got right by the Ritz Carlton Hotel?""

"(About valet parking in Atlanta and parking the car himself) He jumped out of his truck and he gets militant. And he jumps in front of my Range Rover and puts a hand on it, he puts his hands on the hood and he goes "Nobody parks their own car in this parking lot! I park the cars in this parking lot!" Well, I rolled down my window and very politely said, "Get out my fucking way!" [audience cheers] He goes "Nobody talks to me like that! You can't park your car in this parking lot!" And I said "FUCK YOU!". He goes "I'm calling the police. What's your first and last name?" "It's Fuck You. It's F-u-c-k CAPITAL Y-O-U! Fuck you, that's my name." He gets on his radio and calls the Dalai Lama of all parking lot attendants, who calls squealing up in his little red truck. Apparently, they give 'em to 'em. He hopes outta the truck like he's gonna do something. He immediately recognizes me and you see this big "Oh shit!" wash over his face. He literally shoves this kid outta the way and starts apologizing. He said, "Mr. White. I am sorry." I said, "Listen, this kid's not doing his job. He's an insolent little piece of shit. He needs to have his ass reamed." He goes, "Mr. White, he's gonna have his ass reamed by me and my boss and my boss' boss." And I was like, "Well, I had no idea the chain of command went that deep in the parking lot business...""

"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer died last year at the age of 84 years old. For the last 60 years of this man's life, he drank to excess every day. Uh, he was married six times. He smoked pot. He stabbed his second wife. And I've never read one of his books, but I gotta tell you I'm a huge fan."

"We went out last and I got so drunk last night, I woke up this morning and somebody had shit my pants. [audience cheers] I don't know who it was...but I know he eats corn...and cake. Corn cakes, I think that's what he was eating."

"I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet...[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face...I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called...Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?" It's a busy couch."

"To the troops. [Audience cheers as he drinks scotch]"

"We take the money we make from selling the rest of Florida to Israel, we buy Mexico, fix it up and flip it!"

"My favorite byproduct of monogamy, it didn't even dawn on me that this would be the case. When I figured this out, I felt a huge weight just flutter off shoulders. And a lot of you guys might not realize this so this could be a big night of your life because I'm about to impart to you the most important thing I've ever learned. So, guys, I want you to open up your senses and really take this in. Don't waste this moment. Because here it comes...Ready? Here it comes...Guys, if you only have sex with your wife, you can't get caught. [Audience cheers. Makes a fluttering gesture with his hands on his shoulders] Feel it? Feel it? Nobody gives a rat's ass! Nobody's ever gonna kick in a bedroom door, "You motherfu--Is that your ol' lady?" [Makes motions like he's having sex doggy-style and turns and looks over his shoulder, annoyed] I may be exaggerating that stroke just a little. [Makes motions again, but faster] But still a ferocious piece of ass. Although easily winded."

"My favorite place to have sex is on my tour bus, because if I can't quite have the wind to get her there, I can holler at that driver, "Pump the brakes!" [makes a sound like hitting the air brakes - chhh...chhh...chhh...] Faster! [chh! chh! chh! chh!] Thanks, Pat! Boy that Pat can fuck, can't he?"

"Actually you can get caught having sex with your wife. My wife and I were going at it one time one afternoon and the housekeeper walked in. Which is way better than the other way around. It happens the other way and you end up saying things like, "I'll pack my shit...when it stops burning!""

"I find a lot of comfort in having one sex partner. That is because she knows what I like and I know what she won't do."

"When my wife told me that she was anal, I thought, "Great." Turns out, there are two different kinds of "anal"...And she's the wrong one."

"Austin was the first place where I was blatently offered a three-way, and I turned it down because it was one of those deals where it was two dudes and...me. I don't even watch Two and a Half Men. (2:25)"

"[About airports with advanced equipment] You know, you can have fun with that if you do it like I do. I take two Viagra and demand a pat down. "What's that in your pants, Mr. White?" "I have no idea. You're gonna need to pat that down...Pat it back up again...Give it a couple twists. See if it's connected to anything...You might wanna go wash your hands." (2:57)"

"He hooks me up to the gas and I don't feel anything. I'm like "Dude, you need to turn this gas up. He goes, "There are regulations in the State of Nevada stating which, Code One, Section Four..." I'm like, Fuck! And I asked him, I said, "Where did you go to college?" He goes, "Brigham Young." Fuck, dude, turn it up to Catholic. Never let a Mormon set your buzz level. Never. Don't do it. And I'll tell you why. They don't understand "Fucked Up" the way you and I do. They don't. They're guessin', and they're shitty guessers. (4:32)"

"I have an airplane that you guys...bought me. I like it a lot. Half of the Fortune 500 companies in America have let go of their private jets. Not Ron White Inc., I'm flying that son-of-a-bitch straight into bankruptcy! I guarantee you, one day, I'll be livin' in a double-wide trailer with shag carpet, and I'll have a jet with weeds growin' through it. I'll be in the front seat goin', "Push me around some!" And I don't come from money. I come from the opposite of money. I come from...no money. 10 years ago, I lived in a camper in my friend's backyard. He didn't even know I was there. (7:12)"

"I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I have learning disabilities. I don't even have a high school diploma. I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper. I do have a GED, and if you don't know what GED stands for...you probably got one, too. (9:13)"

"I told my wife, I said, "You get there at 5:30 you can fly with me but let me tell you something Sugar Tits, at 5:31 I am wheels up and I am fucking gone!" ...I said that. Not very loud, but I said it. 5:31 gets there. Is she there? No! Do I leave? [Majority of the audience says "Yes!"] ...No! 6:01 gets there. Is she there? No. Do I leave? No. Why? Because this dick won't suck itself, that's why. (10:29)"

"Very politely, I said, "Lady, talking during live theater, as far as social skills go, is like shitting in the street." She goes, "You better mind your own business." I said, "You better quit shittin' in the street". She goes, "I'll have you thrown outta here". I said "IF YOU DON'T QUIT FLAPPIN' YOUR FUCKIN' COCK HOLSTER!" Everybody heard that. Before, it was a little disturbance right behind me. Very few people privy to that one. Then, 1,700 people hear me going, "If you don't quit flappin' your fuckin' cock holster!" All of this at a show called "Love", by the way...I had her murdered and buried in the desert. [Shrugs while the audience laughs] It's Vegas, baby. Be careful who you fuck with. (14:11)"

"We got Bin Laden, man. It took 10 years, it wasn't exactly a calf-rope. He was in that house for six years with five wives. I would've shot my fucking self! I'd have my head out of the window screaming at drones, going, "I'M OVER HERE!" (26:53)"

"You ever smoke so much pot your wife starts to make sense? Me neither. (30:20)"

"Last year in Florida, at Sea World Florida, an animal trainer was killed by a killer whale...HUH. Turns out, there's a reason they didn't name them "ocean ponies." Some things are exactly as they seem, folks. Killer whales kill, pilot whales wear dark sunglasses. I'm not sure how the sperm whale got his name...but I'm not getting in the pool. (31:06)"

"I'm 61 years old now, and I know two things to be true. One: anything has the potential to become a DUI checkpoint if you crash your car into it. And you can't unfuck the housekeeper."

""Don't drink and drive." That's what they say. They also say "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." Well, which one is it? Somebody's gotta drive."

"So I was watching all the Katrina coverage and I got really angry at... Christians who didn't pray hard enough... It's their fucking fault. First off, they needed to pray against the people that were praying for Katrina to hit, because New Orleans is a den of sin and iniquity; an area where gay people dance! But now they have to pray double, and if they had just put that little effort up front, we could've avoided all of this. I think it's time we take a lesson from history, and return to human sacrifice."

"I thought it was really odd at how much people freaked out at Katrina. You'd think they'd be worried about something important. 'Oh my God, look! George Bush is just appointing all his friends into office and we're in an unfounded war...' But no- 'Fuck that! That nigger's stealing some potato chips!'"

"I really don't have a problem with gay marriage... because I'm tolerant and rational."

"[On airport pornography] I've never seen anybody purchase them, but apparently people are. They wouldn't carry them just for aesthetic purposes. They're not trying to impress people with their porn collection, you know. So, it's just a matter of economics...Apparently enough people are goin' in there goin' 'Oh, whoa... All right! The worlds filthiest ball-draining cum-mag! Right on! This ought to make the flight a little more tolerable. Alright. Oh shit! Ha Ha! Page 35: Puckering virgin assholes - alright I gotta get it. Hope nobody is sitting next to me on the plane, because they're in for a rude awakening. Cause I'm gonna be spankin' it!' Ah, it's weird. I'm not knocking porn, I love porn... but when I go to the airport I don't have to buy those magazines, because I have this thing called will power. And I utilize it so that I don't have to whip my dick out in public. I can wait five hours. At least until I'm in the cab on my way home."

"[On marketing and commercials] HENDERSON VALLEY EGGS! You're gonna love our eggs!!!... [cut to small granny in rockin chair] I like eggs the old fashioned way. [return to youth] "Fuck you granny!" [punch mimic]"

"I don't remember ordering the Christian sandwich..."

"If you wanna find out 101 things to do with plums, heh, read your in-flight magazine."

"[After reading an article on Miles for Kids in an inflight journal] What [President of the Airline] is doing is, he's urging everyone to give up their frequent flyer miles for sick kids... But as I was reading this, there were two empty seats next to me. Why can't sick kids sit there? If they're so concerned with sick kids, shouldn't they have like a pen of sick kids next to the gate?"

"We get to see it! January 1st, 2000! We get to see... all those fundamentalist preachers having to do their backpedaling when the Armageddon doesn't occur."

"And then Jesus answered him, Jesus said, 'Well, my son...that is when I was helping one of the other FIVE BILLION PEOPLE on the planet, you selfish fuck. C'mon! You were walking back to your Malibu beach colony home and stubbed your toe on some driftwood, it's not a fuckin' emergency, alright? There's other people with real problems.'"

"High Times magazine is a notch intellectually below Highlights for Children. I mean, they're both great to read when you're baked, but come on, ya know..."

"I have a few business ideas (that I'm going to advertise in High Times, amongst other places), and one of them is a service in which I offer to eat and describe pork to kosher people."

"[With reference to a 'how to date' book] Because you've been on dates where y'know, you forget to open your eyes and wear pants and speak English."

"[On the Dating Handbook] 'With a telescope, some munchies, and a warm blanket, watch for Halley's comet.' Yeah. I like that. There's no time limit. Just sit there and grow old together."

"If someone gives you a kazoo and toots around the house to MTV, they're not gonna fuck you."

"[On death & euthanasia] I think its funny how, that if I want to die with peace and dignity that there's someone far away that can prevent it. Someone's like [strong southern accent] 'Hi, I just wanted to call. This is Jeanette Dunwoody from Valdosta, Georgia. I heard that you're trying to kill yourself and I just wanna say that, well, you can't.' 'What?' 'Yeah, its not right, because all life is precious.' 'No, my life isn't precious, I've been reduced to a shit and piss factory. I hurt always. I'm going to die within a year and I'm in pain constantly.' 'Oh, but um...no. Because of the Bible.' 'Well, I don't believe in the Bible.' 'Well, I do, silly!' [Hangs up]"

"So at the CES, there was a guy selling off this porno called Fuck My Dirty Shithole: The Movie. I bet you're thinking exactly what I was thinking … how did they make that book into a movie?"

"James Lipton: The most pompous arrogant failure in history."

"Radio DJ's are the same two motherfucking asshole clowns all over the country. I hate radio interviews. 'You didn't know it David, but you're just in time for the Friday Morning Fart Song!' No, sorry, I'm not doing that. Even if it's only fifteen minutes, it's the worst fifteen minutes of your life. I don't care if you've been in a fucking shark attack. If I was in a shark attack, and then they had no anesthetic and they had to heal it up, sew it up, I would be like, 'This sucks,' but then if two DJ's came in and interviewed me I'd fucking shoot myself."

"And the Pope is infallible. We're taught that. Pope can't make a mistake. So I don't know why the Catholic church just doesn't take that motherfucker to Vegas. 'All right, put all the Catholic Church's money on 17 black.' [casino sound] '32 red, I'm sorry.' 'No, I don't think you heard, he said 17 black! Thank you! Let's go to Bellagio!' That way they could pay off those debts they owe."

"[On the Catholic Church's sex scandals] And y'know, they're God's representatives, so that means... God fucks little boys."

"Rickey Henderson, pick up the phone, man, it's me... you."

"It's hip to be square. Remember that shitty song by that shitty band 20 motherfuckin' years ago?"

"In New York, you are constantly faced with this very urgent decision that you have to make, about every twenty minutes...you have to decide, immediately, you have to go "Ohmigod. Do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world?""

"The South has more of a disproportionate amount of irony on T-shirts than any other region in the country."

"[On being Jewish in the American South] All the parents see you as is a Jew; I'm a Jewish kid. I'm like a fucking alien to them, you know, I'm a freak...so If I slept over a friend's house, I'd always have to deal with these questions in the morning, like, you know, Mom coming in going "David, I'm so sorry to have to ask you this, I'm so sorry, um...I'm fixing to make breakfast for everybody and I certainly wanna include you...and I'm just having some questions I was hoping you could answer...do y'alls people eat oatmeal?" What? Yeah. Is there something in the Torah that says we shouldn't eat oatmeal? "No, it's just that I don't know much about y'alls people, that's all, I just don't know--I know y'all hate Jesus! I know y'all hate Jesus, that much I do know...aand, I know y'alls have seven Jew bankers that control the world's money supply, right? In a bunker somewhere about a mile into the earth's core? Is that right? Yeah? And y'all do dances in the woods, y'all wear cloaks and do secret services and burn potions and whatnots, and y'all have horns--that's all I know about y'alls people!""

"Here's a little what it was like for me growing up in Atlanta... They had this ill-fated thing called 'Light Up Atlanta'. So, I'm standing in line... I tap the guy in front of me and say, "Uh, excuse me, can you tell me if this is the line for the beer, or the line to get the tickets to get the beer.' [long pause] 'I dunno, faggot.' I don't know, faggot? What? What did I do? Was it because I was sucking his cock at the time?"

"The Bible is the funniest book I have ever read. It's so funny! Right in the first six pages, it's funny!"

"I don't think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, our ties with the Saudi family and our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that's what he fucking said! Are we a nation of 6-year-olds? Answer: yes."

"[On the Iraq War] I am against the war, but I do support our white troops. [laughter, long pause] No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a member of the party of inclusion. Wonderful, tolerant, rational human beings they are..."

"[After having made an abortion joke] I know that can hit close to home for some people....was anyone here aborted?... (mimicking child's voice:) 'I was found in a trash can!' Okay, well, that sorta counts..."

"So all my friends have kids now... which I think is rude."

"All my friends are always telling me how hard it is to have kids. 'Oh, David, it's so hard.' That's not hard. I'll tell you what hard is. Try talking your girlfriend into her third consecutive abortion. Yeah, that's hard, that takes finesse. You’re just inconvenienced."

"Not funny, not funny says she, didn't like it!"

"I do believe that on a whole, women are definitely smarter than men…I also believe that dogs are smarter than women. (woman in audience says “Not buying that”) No? That one, you don’t believe it? You believe that I didn’t do a series of tests? You are right to not believe it, because I’m going to go ahead and admit that I do not believe what I just said, it was what’s described as a 'joke.' Um, I’ll be telling a bunch of them here tonight."

"So I was watching this one show where - there's a guy on stage and he pretends he has contact with the dead and spirits talk to him...[Some people in the audience give suggestions, one of which is Crossing Over.] Crossing–...no, no, no, no, no, it was, uh, church. It was church."

"[On freedom/America] I saw this ad for electric scissors [referring to a bit earlier] during an episode of The Simple Life. Which is a show that glorifies these two rich, giggling cunts, who have no respect for anyone. Just vile people; awful human beings. Who get away with anything, because they're rich. I, right then, vowed that I would retain this image everytime I hear George Bush say 'the terrorists hate our freedom.' You know what? I hate our freedom. Little ol' me, an American! I hate it! That's all we've done with it? We're fucking assholes, man. We...are...awful."

"If the terrorists hated freedom, the Netherlands would be fucking dust."

"There's a kind of racism in the south that is really so steadfast and true that I almost kind of begrudgingly, you know, admire it in a way, and that is that there are segregated graveyards. That just to me defies all logic...but it's also, like, "Well, hats off...you're going to stick to your guns on that one, and take that shit to the grave? All right!" There's enough people to go, "Naw, man..ugh, I don't even wanna think about it. My dead, lifeless, rotting, maggot-infested corpse...next to some black man's? Ewww!!! That's gross!" But that does pose an interesting scenario, because, what's going to happen when the zombies rise out of their graves? ... "We must take over the human race-- wait, what were you?" "I'm black." "Fuck you, nigger, you can't come." "What? No! But I'm a skeleton, you can't tell!" "Fuck youuu...""

"We should just make it a little bit more difficult for people with known violent tendencies to be able to get a gun. And I'm not talking about the cops. No. Not talking about the cops. I'm saying, let's make it a little bit more difficult for mentally unstable people with known violent tendencies to be able to get a gun. And again, I'm not talking about the cops. If you can go on their Facebook page and see that this guy is a virulent racist, right? Make it a little more difficult for virulent racists, who are mentally unstable with known violent tendencies to be able to get-- And again, I'm not talking about the cops."

"I think we can all agree that Blue Lives Murder. Now... Not all of them, not most of them, but a bunch of em, murder. [scoffs] Theyre murdering us. Well, not us. We're white, but...."

"You know who doesn't like that bit? Cops. They don't like it. They don't like it. And I think its important -- I'm being sincere. I think its important that we acknowledge, all of us, that there are plenty of good, decent, ethical, very brave cops, who put their lives on the line every day, and they don't appreciate being painted with this broad brush as being violent predators just because of the actions of a minority of their brothers. They don't like being stereotyped so that when you see blue, you just think "Oh, violent thug." They don't appreciate it."

"When a man confines an animal in a cage, he assumes ownership of that animal. But an animal is an individual; it cannot be owned. When a man tries to own an individual, whether that individual be another man, an animal or even a tree, he suffers the psychic consequences of an unnatural act."

"There is no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others."

"The only meat in the world sweeter, hotter, and pinker than Amanda's twat is Carolina barbecue."

"Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective."

"The function of the artist is to provide what life does not."

"Logic only gives man what he needs. Magic gives him what he wants."

"Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy."

"Love is dope, not chicken soup."

"So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free."

"If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it — which is what mothers do with their children — then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around."

"There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for."

"Sometimes those things that attract the most attention to us are the things that afford us the greatest privacy."

"Of course I've contradicted myself. I always do. Only cretins and logicians don't contradict themselves. And in their consistency, they contradict life."

"I set an example. That's all anyone can do. I'm sorry the cowgirls didn't pay better attention, but I couldn't force them to notice me. I've lived most of my entire adult life outside the law, and never have I compromised with authority. But neither have I gone out and picked fights with authority. That's stupid. They're waiting for that; they invite it; it helps keep them powerful. Authority is to be ridiculed, outwitted and avoided. And it's fairly easy to do all three. If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid — but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself."

"There are only two mantras... yum and yuk. Mine is yum."

"I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?"

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."

"How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are hiding — escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience — maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who are afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of liars hell. Some folks hide and some folks seek,and seeking when its mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous, can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look, and won't turn tail should they find it — and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway, because nothing, neither the terrible truth, nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth's sweet gas."

"It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it."

"Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard God who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!”"

"There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon. Inessential insanities are a brittle amalgamation of ambition, aggression, and pre-adolescent anxiety — garbage that should have been dumped long ago. Essential insanities are those impulses one instinctively senses are virtuous and correct, even though peers may regard them as coo-coo. Inessential insanities get one in trouble with one's self. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others. In fact, it may be essential. Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar... and is devoted to the inessential."

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning or an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that question is: "Who knows how to make love stay?"."

"When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter."

"On the campus of Outlaw College, professors of essential insanities would characterize the conflicting attitudes of Nina Jablonski and Leigh-Cheri as indicative of a general conflict between social idealism and romanticism. As any of the learned professors would explain, plied with sufficient tequila, no matter how fervently a romantic might support a movement, he or she eventually must withdraw from active participation in that movement because the group ethic — the supremacy of the organization over the individual — is an affront to intimacy. Intimacy is the principal source of the sugars with which this life is sweetened. It is absolutely vital to the essential insanities."

"If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done."

"Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem."

"I sense that novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3 — although it writes much faster than I can spell."

"This baby (the Remington SL3 typewriter) speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard."

"There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act."

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

"Her surname resembled a line from an optometrist's examination chart."

"Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water."

"They'd be no threat to me. I have a black belt in Haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners."

"There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon."

"Sharks are the criminals of the sea. Dolphins are the outlaws."

"She lunched on papaya poo poo or mango mu mu or some other fruity foo foo bursting with overripe tropical vowels."

"There are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better."

"He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet."

"The man and woman firmly shook hands. The solution to the overpopulation problem might rest in such handshakes."

"A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?"

"If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws."

"They snuggled closer, and when they were as close as they could get without being behind one another, they commenced to kiss again."

"This stuff's so fine Julius Caesar called for it with his dying breath. 'A toot, Brutus,' is what he said."

"Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue."

""I'll follow him to the ends of the earth," she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that."

"A rabbi's dog could score pork chops in the streets of Tel Aviv easier than Bernard could acquire tequila in King County Jail."

"She tried out the chamber pot, although she really had nothing to contribute."

"Any half-awake materialist well knows — that which you hold holds you."

"The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist."

"Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense."

"I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit."

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

"Bernard Mickey Wrangle had developed a psychological test of his own. It was short, simple, and infallible. To administer the test, merely ask the subject to name his or her favorite Beatle. If you are at all familiar with the distinct separate public images of the four Beatles, then you'll recognize that the one chosen reveals as much about the subject's personality as most of us will ever hope to know."

"Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning."

"This is the way to burn," the fuse seemed to be saying to the more docile, slow-witted candlewick. "Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn."

"Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning."

"Twenty candles on a cake. Twenty Camels in a pack. Twenty months in the federal pen. Twenty shots of tequila down a young girl's gullet. Twenty centuries since Our Lord's last pratfall, and after all that time we still don't know where passion goes when it goes."

"They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy."

"It is so amusing the way that mortals misunderstand the shape, or shapes, of time. … In the realms of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. … Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received."

"Above the building, the sky recalled passages from Les Miserables, threadbare and gray."

"Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard."

"Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic."

"If you didn't serve the nasty fellow (God), the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down."

"The shaman lives outside the social system, refusing to have any part of it. Yet he seems to connect the populace to the heavens and the earth far more directly than the priest."

"In the quiet ache of the evening, Alobar listened to his calluses grow."

"I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners."

"You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House."

"Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air — moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh — felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing."

"If you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropiate port you find yourself docked."

"Let me see if I can put it in words that even the inebriated might understand."

"She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang."

"... overdramatizing the word of God, turning the Scriptures into a cross between a German opera and a hockey game."

"The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever."

"...the natural process of aging, which according to Dr. Wiggs Dannyboy, is so unnaturally cruel that only man could have ordained it — neither nature nor God would stoop so low."

"My lunar sign is in Virgo. Every month when the moon is full, I'm driven to balance my checkbook and straighten up my apartment. I can't help myself. Instead of a werewolf I turn into an accountant."

"Well, there's one thing to be said for money. It can make you rich."

"There's probably no subject with quite so many conflictin' opinions about it as there are about food, and 'tis better to swap bubble gum with a rabid bulldog than challenge a single one o' the varyin' beliefs your average human holds about nutrition."

"I deserve to be chained by night in a church basement without company o' cassette player if I'm not man enough to ask you for the teeniest, slightest brush of oral-muscular affaction."

"Water! Of all liquids on Earth, the only one chosen for scrubbin' and flushin'. The liquid they rinse baby's nappies in, the fluid that floods the gutters o' this cloud-squeezer town; a single drop o' water discolors a glass of Irish, and you, false friend, are wantin' me to pour this abrasive substance into me defenseless body!"

"Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult."

"A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised."

"A lot of progress was being made there at MIT. Those guys had molecules jumping through hoops like poodles in a circus."

"Most snoring is composed by Beethoven or Wagner, although a few times Wiggs had heard heavy metal rock performed on the somnambulate bassoon."

"They were old enough to know better. Some of them were old enough to remember when old Macdonald had a farm."

"To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought."

"It couldn't have been Pan's output alone because Alobar's testicles were as flat and juiceless as trampled grapes."

"The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously."

"...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell."

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide."

"The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict."

"In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak."

"Of the seven deadly sins, lust is definitely the pick of the litter."

"...she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it — which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call "sages," and those who act upon it, we call "artists.""

"A person can't make a career out of somebody else's invective."

"Not naive," Conch Shell had corrected him, "He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear."

"Leave me in the night but please don't leave me in the dark"

"keep your eye on the ball, even if you cannot see the ball."

"Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines'."

"It's a smile a girl could bring home to mother, if she had a mother; a smile a girl could pet like a pony, sip like a lemonade, hum like a popular tune; a smile a girl would feel safe with in a dark alley."

"Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign."

"Night, when tangos play on the nurse's radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sedan cruises the pleasure districts, when neon flickers "Free at Last" in a dozen lost languages, and shapes left over from childhood move furtively behind the moon-dizzy boughs of the fir."

"There's no such thing as security in this life, sweetheart; and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you'll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes that she's found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? It's the waiting room, it's the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she's stuck in the lobby where she can't see the show."

"...that she was the one who'd made friends with the Snake, that she'd let it lick the blood of her first menstruation, that she … ooo eee, that she … ooo eee, that she … ooo, eee, that she now knew what the Serpent knew."

"There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commenses, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour [...] our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection with space becomes as solid as bone."

"In this room, the salamander was squashed between the pages of the rhyming dictionary, thereby changing poetry forever. Here, Salome walked around with a big red fish held high up over her head. Old Father spanked her with a ballet slipper, sending her to bed without milk or honey. Dance was changed in this room, too."

"So this, then, is the chamber of the hootchy-kootch. Its bathtub full of orchids. Its closet full of smoke."

"Your friend insults the homeless by giving them no credit for having made the decisions that shaped their lives, and demeans them further by declaring them powerless to alter their situations. There’re many ways, my dear, to victimize people. The most insidious way is to persuade them that they’re victims."

"All Uncle Larry is saying is that individuals have to accept responsibility for their own bad choices. If every time we choose a turd, society, at great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all. Maybe it boils down to the premium we want to place on liberty."

"I’m acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn’t be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices."

"You can love ‘em till your well runs dry, Belford, but you can never love ‘em enough, and you know it. No matter how much others might love you, you can’t love yourself unless you’re in charge of your own actions, and you’ll never take charge as long as you can get away with blaming your shortcomings and misfortunes on your family or society or your race or gender or Satan or whatever…"

"People of zee wurl, Relax!"

"Nostalgia's nice enough in little bitty doses, it puts personal peach fuzz on the hard ass of history."

"There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance."

"On the poor use of grammar It's a matter of usage. If a house is off-plumb and rickety and lets in the wind, you blame the mason, not the bricks. Our words are up to the job. It's our syntax that's limiting."

"In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its punchline."

"What is it that separates human beings from the so called lower animals? Well as I see it, it's exactly one half dozen significant things: Humor, Imagination, Eroticism — as opposed to the mindless, instinctive mating of glow-worms or raccoons — Spirituality, Rebelliousness, and Aesthetics, an appreciation of beauty for its own sake. Now, since those are the features that define a human being, it follows that the extent to which someone is lacking in those qualities is the extent to which he or she is less than human. Capisce?"

"And what would our ideas of God, of religion, be like if they had come to us through the minds of women? Ever think of that?"

"The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy."

"Moreover, given the unpleasant option of having to associate with either the self-satisfied beautiful or the self-pitying plain, he'd choose the former every time because beauty could sometimes transcend smugness whereas self-pity just made ugliness all the more unattractive."

"Suppose the neutral angels were able to talk to Yahweh and Lucifer — God and Satan, to use their popular titles — into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their earthly kingdom? Would God be satisfied to take loaves and fishes and itty-bitty thimbles of Communion wine, while allowing Satan to have the redeye Gravy, eighteen ounce New York steak, and buckets of chilled champagne? Would God really accept twice-a-month lovemaking for procreative purposes and give Satan the all-night, no-holds-barred, nasty "can't-get-enough-of-you" hot-as-hell fucks?"

"The Devil doesn't make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn't make us mean. Rather, when we're mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world."

"For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass."

"Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace — and maybe even glory."

"Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land."

"I'm looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis."

"I've always assumed that every time a child is born, the Divine reenters the world. Okay? That's the meaning of the Christmas story. And every time that child's purity is corrupted by society, that's the meaning of the Crucifixion story. Your man Jesus stands for that child, that pure spirit, and as its surrogate, he's being born and put to death again and again, over and over, every time we inhale and exhale, not just at the vernal equinox and on the twenty-fifth of December."

"Good luck to you, pal. That's a search these days."

"I'm descended from a long line of preachers and policemen. Now, it's common knowledge that cops are congenital liars, and evangelists spend their lives telling fantastic tales in such a way as to convince otherwise rational people that they're factual. So, I guess I come by my narrative inclinations naturally. Moreover, I grew up in the rural South, where, although television has been steadily destroying it, there has always existed a love of colorful verbiage."

"Usually, my witticisms are composed on the spot. They're simply intrinsic; an inseparable, integral, organic part of my writing process — doubtlessly because humor is an inseparable, integral part of my philosophical worldview. The comic sensibility is vastly, almost tragically, underrated by Western intellectuals. Humor can be a doorway into the deepest reality, and wit and playfulness are a desperately serious transcendence of evil. My comic sense, although deliberately Americanized, is, in its intent, much closer related to the crazy wisdom of Zen monks and the goofy genius of Taoist masters than it is to, say, the satirical gibes on Saturday Night Live. It has both a literary and a metaphysical function."

"The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously."

"It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song. There is evidence that the honoree might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you’re wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person’s biochemical sky more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact, the poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic desire, let alone disclosing the hidden mystical essence of the material world. Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the “illogical” line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and the bewildering assaults of culture."

"Nobody can say the word “naked” as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been."

"To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt."

"All animals copulate but only humans osculate. Parakeets rub beaks? Sure they do, but only little old ladies who murder schoolchildren with knitting needles to steal their lunch money so that they can buy fresh kidneys to feed overweight kitty cats would place bird billing in the realm of the true kiss."

"Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time. Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life."

"Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew? When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work. The pervasive brutality in current fiction – the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord – is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. Less apparent is that bland writing — timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing – is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies."

"I'll say this much: virtually every advancement made by our species since civilization first peeked out of its nest of stone has been initiated by lone individuals, mavericks who more often than not were ignored, mocked, or viciously persecuted by society and its institutions. Society in general maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die – or kill – than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular. Cultural institutions by and large share one primary objective: herd control. Even when ostensibly benign, their propensity for manipulation, compartmentalization, standardization and suppression of potentially disruptive behavior or ideas, has served to freeze the evolution of consciousness practically in its tracks. In technological development, in production of material goods and creature comforts, we've challenged the very gods, but psychologically, emotionally, we're scarcely more than chimpanzees with bulldozers, baboons with big bombs."

"Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone."

"We humans have always defined ourselves by narration. What's happening today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our stories for us. The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform. Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow sociology, and insidious lies. Individualism is bad for business – though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent. And yes, it's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism.."

"What we, thanks to Jung, call "synchronicity" (coincidence on steroids), Buddhists have long known as "the interpenetration of realities." Whether it's a natural law of sorts or simply evidence of mathematical inevitability (an infinite number of monkeys locked up with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing Hamlet, not to mention Tarzan of the Apes), it seems to be as real as it is eerie."

"Although I participated enthusiastically in the sixties psychedelic revolution, and tried to mimic it – its trappings, its mythology, its silliness, its profundity – in print in my first novel, I had nothing to do with its creation. Rather, it was the confluence of two disparate elements – acute socio-political dissatisfaction and pharmacological neo-shamanism – that precipitated it; and it was democracy, as much as ferocious opposition from both the right-wing and left-wing establishments, that caused it to eventually unravel. Democracy? Yep, oddly enough. The counterculture light was so bright it began to attract moths (people who sadly were not intellectually or spiritually prepared to meaningfully assimilate transformative multi-dimensional data streams from hyperspace) and stinging stink bugs (the thugs that invariably invade every utopia) in such great numbers that they eventually crowded out the butterflies (the educated middle class truth-seekers who switched on the light in the first place). That's an oversimplification, of course, but it's good to bear in mind that like it or not, enlightenment has always been, even in a golden age, pretty much limited to an elite. In America, the relatively finite psychedelic culture was shoved aside by the burgeoning boogie culture, whose drugs of choice were booze, speed, and cocaine; and whose goal was not to attain spiritual bliss, deeper understanding, or an end to war and repression but rather to get thoroughly fucked up."

"Except in the areas of civil rights and medical marijuana, the legacy of the sixties counterculture has been largely superficial. Still, though the light has dimmed and gone underground, something in me would like to think the sixties phenomenon was a dress rehearsal for a grander, wider leap in consciousness yet to come. However, since Seafood Kabob is likely to win the Belmont Stakes before a psychic jailbreak of that magnitude materializes, my strategy is to try to live as if that day were already here."

"Watts published a luminous book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity that ought to be required reading for every high school senior. Watts elaborates beautifully on what I've learned from observation and personal experience: namely, that security is an illusion."

"Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true."

"When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. Then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. Then, and only then, does he add a period."

"Forty-odd years ago, there was a countercultural moment, a brief, shining moment, as it were, when the eyes of a generation glimpsed the Eden beneath the veil. However fleeting was this paradise, or however harsh has been its repression, its light nonetheless inspired a rowdy cohort of artists to carry its torch into the future. Tom Robbins is one of these unruly pioneers, and his frequently bestselling novels are so saturated in an uncontainable joie de vivre that they have remained virtually required reading throughout the years and decades since their initial publication."

"We don't say to women, "what do you mean you had a three way with two girls and a guy and you ate her pussy a little bit. You must be a lesbian." But we say to guys, "you mean you [touched a dick]. You must be a fag."… Straight male sexuality is all about this paranoia about am I feminine or am I gay. So the man who allows himself to do something perceived as womanly or faggoty is not a man anymore."

"The butt is not a magical place that only gay people can visit, like a leather bar or the Liberace Museum."

"But just because we're conditioned to view some things as disgusting and immoral doesn't mean that some things aren't, in actual point of fact, disgusting and immoral. Human sacrifice, for instance. Or cannibalism. Or Ann Coulter."

"Seattle sucks. New York and Chicago are real cities. Seattle is Dubuque, Iowa, putting on airs. People here think Seattle is Paris... it ain't. I've been to Paris, and this place isn't Paris."

"Despite what Pope Benedict would have us believe, sex without love can be fucking amazing."

"One man's piss-soaked sadomasochistic orgy is another man's poetic ecstasy."

"There is a Karmic Rule of Kink (KROK), and it goes something like this: "Dump the honest foot fetishist and you will marry the dishonest necrophiliac." Break up with a guy over his relatively tame fetish — and a foot fetish is about as tame as they get — and KROK will make sure your next boyfriend is some lying corpsefucker who tells you only what you want to hear. ("Honestly, honey, I only like live girls!") Only after you've married the corpsefucker and had a few kids — once extricating yourself from the marriage becomes a hugely complicated ordeal — will he ask you to lie in a tub of ice until you're good and cold. And when you're lying in that tub of ice — and odds are you will, because you won't want to put your poor kids through a divorce — you'll remember that sweet, harmless foot fetishist whose heart you broke back in college, the man you could have married."

"Yes, we must donate and volunteer and protest and vote, all while reminding ourselves daily that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. And we must commit to defending our friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are immigrants (documented or not), Muslims (American born, immigrants, or refugees), people of color, women seeking reproductive health care, trans men and women seeking safety, lesbian and gay men seeking to protect their families, and everyone and everything else Trump has threatened to harm, up to and including the planet we all live on."

"Saying someone—like our president-elect—couldn't possibly be into piss because that particular kink doesn't square with a known character trait and/or aspect of his public persona is like saying a hard-driving male CEO would never pay a dominatrix to tie him up, humiliate him, and shove two dozen needles through the head of his cock because he's such a powerful guy. Or saying a feminist would never wanna have her ass slapped or her hair pulled by a male sex partner. Or saying an out-and-proud gay man would never wanna be called a faggot by the dude fucking his ass. While most powerful CEOs aren't BDSM subs and most feminists aren't into having their asses slapped and their hair pulled and most out-and-proud gay men aren't into being called faggots when they're bottoming, [...] enough of all three are for each to be a cliché."

"There's nothing the rightwing loves more than a black person willing to say black people are the real racists or a queer person willing to say queer people are the real threat. If you're queer or a person of color and you're telegenic and articulate and willing to sell the rancid cum rag that passes for your soul, you'll never have to do an honest day's work again in your life."

"Who's more reputable than Dan Savage? I can think of a few hundred million people on the North American continent alone. But, hey, so long as my Wikipedia page—which, for the record, I did not author and only found out about when a web-savvy youngster brought it to my attention—features that hyperflattering photo of me, I'm happy to do my part for them."

"There is a strain of the left that is really invested in show trials and purity testing and virtue signaling... And would rather lose surrounded by perfect allies than win with an army that includes imperfect allies."

"My proof that homosexuality is not a choice? A question for my straight male readers: Is there anything I could do or say or write that would convince you to willingly, happily, eagerly, anxiously, deliriously, lustfully put my dick in your mouth and leave it there until I had an orgasm? I rest my case."

"Every American may have equal access to ice cream, but there's no guarantee that the outcome of eating ice cream will be equal."

"I wasn't going to argue with a German about the psychology of a forced march – not even a guiltless German."

"No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer."

"Take me to the driest county in the most conservative state, and in two hours this determined hedonist will find you all the drugs, whores, and booze you'll need to pass an eventful weekend."

"So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns."

"Natural isn't something I get called a lot in Texas."

"The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens."

"The cruel law of life is that a solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to."

"In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses."

"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure."

"It seems to be a law of American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic."

"Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so."

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."

"A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday."

"A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it."

"In America nothing dies easier than tradition."

"Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell the difference. In fact, though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging. Jogging is solemn. Poker is serious. Once you grasp that distinction, you are on your way to enlightenment."

"The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him."

"We watched some of the movie. It was shocking. Sex is apparently hard labor. Various persons supported crushing weights in agonizing positions for what seemed like endless blocks of time. Exhausted men grunted and toiled like movers trying to get a refrigerator into a fifth floor walk-up."

"Some years back, all the best people came to bipartisan agreement that the most shameful thing a person could do with power was not to use it. Since then everybody who wants to get ahead in Washington has made a great show of being a fierce fellow when left alone in the room with a little power. There seems to be a fear that if there is somebody around so low that it is all right to dump the garbage on him, and you hesitate, everybody will call you a sissy, and you will never be invited to lunch with Professor Kissinger. Strange values result. Great killers are esteemed for good citizenship. "Not afraid to use power," people say of them."

"I went to the Rayburn Building the other day on trifling business. It was an appalling experience. I had forgotten how preposterous the thing is with its pretentious megatonnage of rock and steel spreading acre after acre down the slope of Capitol Hill in sullen defiance to eternity and man. It dwarfs the forum of the Caesars. Mussolini would have wept in envy. Inside, one is compelled to dwell upon the insignificance of humanity. Not a single tiny wisp of beauty, nothing that is graceful, or charming, or eccentric, or human presents itself to the senses. Trying to imagine Clay and Webster in this celebration to the death of the spirit, erected to the glory that was Congress, is an exercise in comic despair. What do we have? Banks of stainless-steel elevators. Miracles of plumbing. Corridors of cemetery marble stretching to far horizons under the most artificial light millions of dollars can create, a light that abides no shadow, grants no privacy, tolerates nothing that is interesting in the slightest degree. Occasionally a small figure appeared in the distance, grew larger, then larger, then assumed human proportion, then passed and became smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Two ants had passed in a pyramid."

"No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to give them to the people than he would have to filch another man's property off a taxicab seat. The Government, of course, commonly leaks classified documents when it deems publication convenient to manipulate public opinion to its advantage. Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents."

"Americans don't like plain talk anymore. Nowadays they like fat talk. Show them a lean, plain word that cuts to the bone and watch them lard it with thick greasy syllables front and back until it wheezes and gasps for breath as it comes lumbering down upon some poor threadbare sentence like a sack of iron on a swayback horse. "Facilitate" is typical of the case. A generation ago only sissies and bureaucrats would have said "facilitate" in public. Nowadays we are a nation of "facilitate" utterers. "Facilitate" is nothing more than a gout-ridden, overstuffed "ease." Why has "ease" fallen into disuse among us? It is a lovely little bright snake of a word which comes hissing quietly off the tongue and carries us on, without fuss and French horns, to the object which is being eased. This is English at its very best. Easing is not one of the great events of life; it does not call for Beethoven; it is not an idea to get drunk on, to wallow in, to engage in multiple oleaginous syllabification until it becomes a pompous ass of a word like "facilitate.""

"Long words, fat talk — they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?"

"Can't-do guys do all right in Washington, perhaps because lobbying is the one thing that can't-do guys almost always can do, and magnificently. Detroit may not be able to dispose of exhaust very neatly, but it can build a beautiful lobbying machine for selling Government the story of its own inadequacy. What is it in the Washington air that restores the energies of these once dynamic American manufacturers? Something there is that brings out all the latent half-forgotten ingenuity that seems to have abandoned them back in the home plant."

"Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.""

"Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but it is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way."

"Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty."

"The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East we have been propping up and knocking down governments more or less openly for the past twenty-five years. It is an established policy. Everybody knows it. It is supposed to be done covertly, which is only sensible if you hope to succeed since publicity in matters of this sort can only make the natives restless and defeat the project. Imagine the chauvinistic rallying around President Nixon that would have occurred if Canada, say, had announced that her agents were going to destabilize United States society so that discontented Americans could heave the Nixon Administration out of office."

"Old people at the supermarket make you wonder about all those middle-aged people you see jogging the streets to preserve their vascular systems for another fifty years. And about all the people of all ages all over the country who are eating less, drinking less, smoking less, driving safer and in general looking for a death-proof safety suit to get them over the peak years and down into the valley of old age fit to enjoy the fruits of their abstention and labor. Will anybody care when they get there? Will they be able to afford an orange?"

"I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am."

"This may be why New Yorkers instinctively avoid making eye contact with each other in crowded places, why they "look right through you," as dismayed visitors often complain. They are not looking right through you at all; they are discreetly avoiding an intrusion into your space. They sense the danger in a place where a one-degree temperature rise can mean an explosion."

"Early in life, most of us probably observe an unhappy relationship between labor and wealth — to wit, the heavier the labor, the less the wealth. The man doing heavy manual work makes less than the man who makes a machine work for him, and this man makes less than the man sitting at a desk. The really rich people, the kind who go around on yachts and collect old books and new wives, do no labor at all. The economic reasons for dividing the money this way are clear enough. One, it has always been done that way; and two, it's too hard to change at this late date. But the puzzling question is why, since the money is parceled out on this principle, young people are constantly being pummeled to take up a life of labor. In any sensible world, the young would be told they could labor if they wanted to, but warned that if they did so it would cost them."

"The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep."

"The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth."

"While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or philosophically elevated by the announcement. If you are going to preach that unfairness is inescapable for some, good sense suggests that you also accept the inevitability of beastly behavior by people who have to carry the burden."

"I am unclear what a "role model" is, but those who used the term seemed to be saying that teachers are people children tend to emulate. In any event, many Miamians must have thought their children would become homosexual if subjected to homosexual teachers. That prompted me to ponder teachers I haven't seen, and scarcely thought about, for decades, and for the first time I reflected on how their sex lives had affected my own. My first thought was that it was curious, perhaps perverse, that I have not turned out to be a spinster."

"There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is."

"By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots. On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed. Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, "You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow." That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers — all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life. Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town. What used to be called "The Crossroads of the World" is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes."

"All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President."

"One may speculate whether the contemporary idea of American society in decay is not a false notion which has been created, at least partially, by this old movie portrait of a society that was once stable, orderly and governed by the immutable justice of the Hollywood censorship code. This is the ever-popular myth of a golden age which persuades so many generations that there was once a wonderful moment in the past when the world was sound and good people ruled and evil was justly punished. After Camelot came chaos and despair, except, of course, that Camelot never existed, any more than the world portrayed by those old Hollywood films existed."

"Life was combat, and victory was not to the lazy, the timid, the slugabed, the drugstore cowboy, the libertine, the mushmouth afraid to tell people exactly what was on his mind whether people liked it or not."

"Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity there is no parent left to tell them."

"He looked upon the time that had been my future in a disturbing way. My future was his past, and being young, he was indifferent to the past."

"​So far as I could make out, what writers did couldn't even be classified as work."

"Unaware of history's higher significance, I slumbered through the bliss of infancy, feeling no impulse whatever to make something of myself."

"Listen here, Buddy, the dead don't come back. You never have to worry about the dead hurting you. It's the living you've got to worry about in this world. (Lucy Baker, Russell Baker's mother, to Russell)."

"At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke."

"Of all the people insistently expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing headlines to trample him flat."

"You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself. It was this way with my generation. We were unhappy with what we inherited and we tried to reshape it in ways that would make it more tolerable to us. You were not uppermost in our thoughts. Now, in middle age, some of us are trying to rewrite history. Some of us tell you, "We labored and dared and sacrificed — all for you — yet we hear no thanks." You will not be unduly moved, I hope, by these laments. They are sentimental cries from persons so attached to the society they have rebuilt that they cannot bear the thought of seeing it overhauled by new proprietors."

"The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality."

"In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe. It is not a candidate's favorite statistic per se that engages us, but the assurance with which he can use it. We are testing the candidates for self-confidence, for "Presidentiality" in statistical bombardment. It doesn't really matter if their statistics be homemade. What settles the business is the cool with which they are dropped. And so, as the second half hour treads the decimaled path toward the third hour, we become aware of being locked in a tacit conspiracy with the candidates. We know their statistics go to nothing of importance, and they know we know, and we know they know we know. There is total but unspoken agreement that the "debate," the arguments which are being mustered here, are of only the slightest importance. As in some primitive ritual, we all agree — candidates and onlookers — to pretend we are involved in a debate, although the real exercise is a test of style and manners. Which of the competitors can better execute the intricate maneuvers prescribed by a largely irrelevant ritual? This accounts for the curious lack of passion in both performers. Even when Ford accuses Carter of inconsistency, it is done in a flat, emotionless, game-playing style. The delivery has the tuneless ring of an old press release from the Republican National Committee. Just so, when Carter has an opportunity to set pulses pounding by denouncing the Nixon pardon, he dances delicately around the invitation like a maiden skirting a bog. We judge that both men judge us to be drained of desire for passion in public life, to be looking for Presidents who are cool and noninflammable. They present themselves as passionless technocrats using an English singularly devoid of poetry, metaphor and even coherent forthright declaration. Caught up in the conspiracy, we watch their coolness with fine technical understanding and, in the final half hour, begin asking each other for technical judgments. How well is Carter exploiting the event to improve our image of him? Is Ford's television manner sufficiently self-confident to make us sense him as "Presidential"? It is quite extraordinary. Here we are, fully aware that we are being manipulated by image projectionists, yet happily asking ourselves how obligingly we are submitting to the manipulation. It is as though a rat running a maze were more interested in the psychologist's charts on his behavior than in getting the cheese at the goal line."

"President Reagan brought us to the ultimate: America As Total Television. During his governance the printed word simply ceased to matter. White House dynamos had once telephoned newspapers to complain about unfair reporting. Not anymore. Now they telephoned network bosses. Even then it wasn't poor reporting they complained about, but poor pictures. A network reporter who thought her report on shortcomings in Reaganland would anger the President's cadres was amazed when the man in charge of propaganda thanked her for doing them a good turn. But, she said, that was a tough piece of reporting. Oh, the words may have been, said the gentleman, but on television words didn't matter. What mattered were pictures. And the pictures had been wonderful."

"Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used."

"Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong."

"[playing golf with his friends]"

"Before I got married, I was on a date one night. This girl had a snake as a pet. A 12-foot boa constrictor; she named it Fluffy. Well, that's just sick in my book. But I didn't know about the snake, and it was our first date. We'd been out drinking. We drank way too much. We get back to her mobile home. Woo, wish I was making that part up. She shuts the door behind me and gives me one of these. [hisses, exhales] She wasn't real good at it, alright? "I'm gonna slip into something a little more comfortable... okay?" and I'm like, "Alright! I'll be waitin' right here! Well, maybe here. Hell, you'll see me." She comes out of the bedroom/kitchen... in a negligee and that snake wrapped around her neck. Boy, that'll sober you up! I'm backin' out the front door, going, "No, thanks, I can drive." She looks at me and she goes, "No, wait, Bill! Fluffy can wrap around us while we make love." I said, "No, he can't, 'cause I'll kill him... Okay?""

"I might've tried bungee jumping, until I saw that video of that guy whose cord came untied. He didn't know it 'till he hit the ground. Oh, he flew off that tower, hollerin' at his buddies, "Whoo! Whoa, check me out, dudes! Whoo, that ground is coming up..."—BAM! And what do you say, if you're the operator of that ride, to the next guy in line? "All right, dude– you're up.""

"[about an incident in a coffee shop]"

"[during a bit about dogs]"

"[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]"

"[watching a baseball game in Los Angeles]"

"There's a group in California that wants to make suicide a capital offense punishable by death. That's like punishing somebody for being on a hunger strike by sending them to bed with no supper."

"My wife and I had an argument last week that was so stupid, it bears repeating. My wife collects twist ties. Welcome to my world."

"I've come up with the three things you never want to hear at your kid's parent/teacher conference. Number one: "You're only responsible for the first $10,000 worth of damage." Number two: "We have medication for this." And number three: "It was more than an ounce and he was less than 100 yards from the school.""

"[while snow-skiing with his family]"

"[about his son Travis]"

"[about magazines school children sell, which his wife buys without even looking at what she's buying]"

"[after drunkenly getting his ear pierced]"

"Welcome to my garage! This is where I go to get away from the honey-do list."

"I joke about it, fellas, but I tell ya, she runs that house. Good Lord. [Several female audience members cheer] Yeah, I know. I know. And if you're a married guy, I ain't telling you nothing you don't already know. But if you're single, and you're thinking about getting married, listen up. You ain't never gonna win the argument. Yeah. If guys were a sports team, we'd be 0-fer."

"I love Slim-Jims so much, I once called their hotline. I swear to God. I told them, "I got your next billion-dollar idea." And the lady on the other end goes, "Oh, do tell." I said, "Alright. Men love beer and Slim-Jims. So, what you need to do, is drill a hole in the middle of that Slim-Jim...so we can suck beer through it and take a bite of Slim Jim! [Audience cheers] Yeah. GENIUS!...She hung up on me."

"(Talking about what he wants at his funeral)"

"(mimicking a big fish talking to a little fish)"

"Boobs are the center of power. Boobs can make a 6-month-old baby and a 65-year-old man both act the same way. And I'm a big fan. Oh, man, I love 'em! And I ain't picky neither. I hate when I hear guys go "I don't like little boobs." I don't care! Big boobs, little boobs, saggy boobs, perky boobs. You could have boobs that look like nanners, I don't give a damn! They're the perfect toy! You squish them, mush them, POOF! They come right back out! You can't even break 'em! Oh, they're amazing. Boobs can make a long trip seem short, make a bad day seem great. [Points to a member of the audience] Bud, let's say you had a bad day at work. Boss been chewing you out all day long. The little girl sitting next to you shows you her boobs, you're like, "This day was GREAT!""

"(mimicking a fish's gills wither side of his neck) "Hey..." (cracks) You paid to see it... "hey... Ever eaten a worm?" (2nd fish) "What? When did you ever eat a worm?" "Oh, one day, me and my buddy were laying on the bank... trying to catch our breath..." - thank you, for those of you who got that..."

"This year, ladies and gentlemen, I was cool for 2 seconds of my life. I got to fly with the Air Force Thunderbirds. (Audience hoots and hollers) You betcha! They called me up out of the blue, and they go, "Hey, we want you to fly with us." And I'm like, "You got the right number?" They said, "Yeah, Bill Engvall, comedian. You stand for what America stands for. Be an honor to have you fly with us." I'm like, (dork voice) "Be an honor to fly with 'ya." He goes, "Well, we gotta get you clearance from the Pentagon." I go, "Well, you're screwed.""

"I tell you what, if it wasn't for the sex, I could be gay. Yeah, then you're just hangin' out with your buddies."

"She's online with her friends, and little boys are starting to call the house. Oh, my God, we had a kid call the house at two in the morning. Oh, I lost it. 'Cause first of all, I'm off in La-la land with Shania Twain in the mountains somewhere. I hear a phone ring and I'm like "Who's got a phone in the mountains??" So when I realize it's my phone, I'm already a little miffed, so I go, "Hello!" And this little voice says "Uh . . . is Emily there?" And I go, "Dude, if you have a brain in your skull, you will hang this phone up right now!" Click. Then my wife turns to me and goes, "Bill, you've got to be nice." And I go, "No, ma'am. "Nice" stops at midnight!""

"[after watching the food teasing scene in "9 1/2 Weeks"]"

"Who applies for that job? Who says "I want to work in lost luggage"? You don't have a good day. That's like having a job emptying port-a-potties. You're just going to catch crap all day long."

"[his plan to prevent potential boyfriends from taking advantage of his daughter]"

"Because we've become so ecologically minded now, they have developed a product called "Rapidly Dissolving Toilet Paper." Just how "rapidly" are we talking? 'Cause I don't want to have to play "Beat the Clock" in the thicket."

"Marital sex is kinda like ordering a Civil War chess set through the mail. You get one piece every four to six weeks, you don't know what kind of shape that piece is gonna be in when you get it, but you still gotta pay the handling charges."

"[about trampolines]"

"[on getting his dogs boarded]"

"[on being condescended to by a flight attendant] Ma'am, when I got up this morning, I didn't wanna be a jackass...you just pushed my jackass button."

"Watching NASCAR with my wife is like taking a test. Every single turn, she has a question. Now, here's the problem: Sometimes her questions actually make sense, I don't have an answer for them. So, I have to do that guy thing and go Pfft! You ever hear your man do that, ladies? That means he doesn't know the answer, but he's thinking."

"And we have a German shepherd we found on the side of the road; that dog's psycho, now I know why she was on the side of the road. Yeah, "nothing's free." But I love that dog. That dog saved my hind end one night. My wife and I are about to go to bed, her wiener dog's jumping on the bed after I just talked to it. [Audience laughs] So just grabbed my wife's wiener dog and put her in the backyard. At about 2 in the morning, I'm woken up by this loud squealing coming from my backyard. My God, I ran out of bed in my underwear, put on my headlight house shoes, go out to my backyard, and a coyote had jumped the fence. Yes, and had my wife's wiener dog pinned down on the ground. I was like, "Aw, hell...appreciate what you're doing, just do it a little more quieter, couldn't you?" About that time, I felt this "WOOSH" right by my leg. That German shepherd ran into the backyard, hit that coyote broadside, that coyote did three flips and jumped the fence. I turned to the German shepherd and I said, "C'mon, you're sleeping in the bed." And the funny thing was, for about a week after, my wife and I would be sitting at the table having breakfast, and there would be about 2-3 coyotes across the road looking at our backyard, and you know the conversation was going like this: "...What? Naw, hell no. Don't go in there, that little dog's a setup. I ain't lying; ask Joe what happened to him!""

"Men have three basic needs: Eating, sleeping, sex. That's it."

"[Talking about the difference between the first and twentieth year of marriage] Remember that first year of marriage, you used to argue just so you could make up and have sex? Twenty years later, you're arguing just so they'll sleep in the other room."

"[about his daughter Emily, who scored 1390 on her SATs]"

"My son is 12 now, and is really getting into girls. A lot. But the thing about twelve year old boys is that they don't possess what I like to call that . . . discretionary gene yet. We were walking home from the ballfield the other day and there was a woman walking towards us who was . . . gifted. I saw them, and I saw him see them. But she was too close for me to go, "Dude, shut up." She hadn't walked two feet behind us and he goes "God dang, did you see the SIZE of those things?" And all I could say was "Yeah, I did!""

"You could take Vicodin, step out of the house, onto a freeway, have a truck hit you, and you'd say "My bad!"."

"A half a Vicodin and a Bahama Mama...makes for a bitchin' day!"

"[after watching a spitting cobra spit at Steve Irwin]"

"[about how he and his wife can't go out on a date, since they're married]"

"[playing Pictionary with his wife and some friends]"

"[taking a vacation with his family in Costa Rica]"

"We could walk into a Chinese restaurant right here in Chicago. And the waiter could have been born here, raised here, went to college here, he has never left the city limits. I'm the idiot that walks in that restaurant and goes [in exaggerated Chinese] "Uh, yes. I'll have fried rice. Egg roll..." And you can see him go "I am so going to spit in your food, I swear to God." And it drives my daughter crazy. 'Cause she goes "why do you do that? That is so insulting to them!""

"[having been recognized by a woman in a diner]"

"I thought "RV" stood for "Recreational Vehicle." No! It stands for "Ruins Vacations.""

"His explanation for the "signs""

"Engvall is in the park flying a kite with his son."

"On the phone with his wife when the plane he was on stopped after hitting a deer."

"Truck driver gets his truck stuck under an overpass, with Engvall watching."

"Engvall pulls his car into a gas station after his tire goes flat."

"Engvall and his wife are packing up their stuff to move, with a U-Haul sitting in their driveway."

"Engvall and his buddy get off a boat with a big string of bass."

"Engvall has an elk hung on the wall."

"Engvall is waiting for an elevator. A man walks up"

"in the lost luggage office in Buffalo"

"Engvall's car breaks down on a highway, there's smoke pouring out of the hood, and a motorist stops to help him."

"In the store, Bill is buying some pants."

"Engvall and his wife have, for three days, had a cement truck in their yard to re-do their porch."

"A friend bought two cakes for his wife's birthday, with a "3" on one and an "8" on the other."

"After Bill is exhausted at a baseball fantasy camp, walking crooked."

"Bill and Larry The Cable Guy walk by a stone that Bill's neighbor had had 1894, his address, carved into it."

"Bill and his brother-in-law had shot a deer and drove it in to get processed. At a rest stop, a woman stops at the truck"

"Tow truck is pulling Bill's car out of his driveway"

"Bill is at the pet store, buying a big bag of cat litter"

"Jeff's, Larry's, and Ron's Heres Your Sign."

"Jeff Foxworthy is having his house repainted and he has a piano in the corner"

"Ron White's son is going on a direct flight from Austin, Texas to Houston, Texas to see his grandparents. Ron is talking to the flight attendant."

"Larry's grandmother has died at age 104"

"As told in the final section of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour Christmas CD:"

"at the Engvalls' home, Travis is about to play on the piano."

"on holiday in Hawaii"

"at the beach"

"Engvall: Yesterday, my son was out in the yard playing with his friend, and he hit his friend. I walked up to him, and I said, "Hey..." (pantomimes hitting his son) "We don't hit". He looked at me like, "Here's your sign, Dad"."

"When I was bullied: you manned-up. You learned something. You realized: I'm not getting the gold star. You realized: you lose. Deal with it."

"I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do."

"I read it for the first time in about 20 years this year–-recently. It wasn't so bad. I get it. I get fan mail now from people who weren't really born yet when the book came out. I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. I know that sounds so ambiguous. It's sort of out of my hands and it has its reputation so what can you do about it? There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19. I was pretty surprised by the level of writing."

"It might be my favorite book of mine. It was a very exciting time in my life. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."

"I reread that book in the summer of '03. . . . And I hadn't looked at that book either since '91. And I was dreading it. I thought it was going to be a really terrible novel. Everything everyone had ever said about it was going to be true. . . . And I started reading it... and I was surprised. It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. Not nearly as weighted down with the importance that I thought I was investing it with. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to reread those passages."

"It's definitely the book that I can tell—I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer–-is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

"Disappear here."

"...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N.Y.U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed party, or a townie."

"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so."

""Wait," she gasps. "What?" I moan, puzzled but almost there. "Luis is a despicable twit," she gasps, trying to push me out of her. "Yes," I say, leaning on top of her, tonguing her ear. "Luis is a despicable twit. I hate him too," and now, spurred on by her disgust for her wimp boyfriend, I start moving faster, my climax approaching. "No, you idiot," she groans. "I said Is it a receptacle tip? Not 'Is Luis a despicable twit.' Is it a receptacle tip? Get off me." "Is what a what? I moan. "Pull out," she groans, struggling. "I'm ignoring you," I say, moving my mouth down on her small perfect nipples, both of them stiff, sitting on hard, big tits. "Pull out, goddamnit!" she screams. "What do you want, Courtney?" I grunt, slowing my thrusts down until I finally straighten up and then I'm just kneeling over her, my cock still half inside. She hunches back against the headboard and my dick slides out."

"As the salesgirl rings up Charles's purchases, I'm playing with the baby while Nancy holds her, offering Glenn my platinum American Express card, and she grabs at it excitedly, and I'm shaking my head, talking in a high-pitched baby voice, squeezing her chin, waving the card in front of her face, cooing, "Yes I'm a total psychopathic murderer, oh yes I am, I like to kill people, oh yes I do, honey, little sweetie pie, yes I do...""

"Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy."

"The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt."

"This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in... this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged..."

"...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed."

"My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this – and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed – and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing..."

"Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I'm twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh..." and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry's is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes' color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT."

"Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is—a master craftsman not—mistook me for someone else so I couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen—and ladies—there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine—so I don't want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get answered—now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?"

"We'll slide down the surface of things..."

"'As a general rule you shouldn't expect too much from people darling,' and then I kiss her on the cheek."

"'I just had my makeup done, so you can't make me cry.'"

"She staggers over to the bathroom door and grabs the edge of it to balance herself and blood starts running down her legs in thin rivulets and when she lifts up the robe we both can see her underwear soaked with blood and she pulls it off, panicking, and suddenly a huge gush of blood expels itself from beneath the robe, splashing all over the bathroom floor.She gasps, a thick noise comes out of her throat and she doubles over, grabbing her stomach, then she screams. Looking surprised and still clutching her stomach, she vomits will staggering backwards, collapsing onto the bathroom floor. There are strands of tissue hanging out of her."

"I'm Christian Bale", Russel, says, taking [her hand]. "Oh right," she says. "Yeah, I thought I recognized you. You're the actor."

"The stars are real. The future is that mountain."

"You do an awfully good impression of yourself."

"And now the missing Boy Scout inevitably provoked the flicker of worry I experienced every morning before Robby and Sarah went off to school, especially if the hangover was bad or I'd had too much coffee. This wide-awake nightmare lasted no more than thirty seconds, a rapid montage that nonetheless required a Klonopin: a rampage at the school, "I'm so scared" being whispered over the cell phone, what sounds like firecrackers popping off in the background, the ricocheting bullet that hurls the second-grader to the floor,the random firing in the library, the blood sprayed over an unfinished exam, the red pools of it forming on the linoleum, the desk spattered with viscera, a wounded teacher ushering dazed children out of the cafeteria, the custodian shot in the back, the girl murmuring "I think I've been hit" before she faints, the CNN vans arriving, the stuttering sheriff at the emergency press conference, the bulletins flashing on TV screens, the "concerned" anchorman offering updates, the helicopters hovering, the final moments when the gunman places the Magnum in his mouth, the overcrowded hospital emergency rooms and the gymnasiums transformed into makeshift morgues, the yellow crime tape ribboned around an entire playground - and then, in the aftermath: the .22 rifle missing from the stepfather's cabinet, the journal recounting the boy's rejection and despair, a boy who took the teasing hard, the boy who had nothing to lose, the Elavil that didn't take hold or the bipolar disorder not detected, the book on witchcraft found beneath the bed, the X carved into his chest and the attempted suicide the month before, the broken hand from punching a wall, the nights lying in bed counting to a thousand, the pet rabbit found later that afternoon hanged from a hook in a small closet - and, finally, the closing images of the endless coverage: the flag at half-staff, the memorial services, the hundreds of bouquets and candles and toys that filled the steps leading up to the school, the bloody hand of a victim on the cover of Newsweek, the questions asked, the simple shrugs, the civil suits filed, the copycats, the reasons you quit praying. Still, the worst news comes out of your own child's mouth: "But he was normal, Dad - he was just like me.""

"I hear today's college women are 'prodigious.'" "Prodigious? Is that what you heard?" "Well, I read it in a magazine. It was something I wanted to believe." "The Jayster. Always a dreamer."

"That doesn't sound like...the Jayster."

"A case could be made for Mr. Ellis as a covert moralist and closet sentimentalist, the best kind, the kind who leaves you space in which to respond as your predispositions nudge you, whether as a commissar or hand-wringer or, like me, as an admirer of his intelligence and craft."

"We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door."

"I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure."

"New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American."

"After all, it is not where one washes one’s neck that counts but where one moistens one’s throat."

"Well, isn’t Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else — and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?"

"Morbid? You make me laugh. This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid. Look at my life. Look at the life around me. Where is this beauty that I am supposed to miss? The nice episodes that others depict? Is not everything morbid? I mean the life of people stripped of their masks. Where are the relieving features? Often I sit down to work at my drawing board, at my typewriter. All of a sudden my joy is gone. I feel tired of it all because, I think, "What's the use?" Today we are, tomorrow dead. We are born and don't know why. We live and suffer and strive, envious or envied. We love, we hate, we work, we admire, we despise. … Why? And we die, and no one will ever know that we have been born."

"If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class. It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for — or ignored."

"Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on."

"Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?"

"The Seal, she lounges like a bride, Much too docile, there's no doubt; Madame Récamier, on side, (if such she has), and bottom out."

"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart."

"There is always more surface to a shattered object than a whole."

"Someday beneath some hard Capricious star — Spreading its light a little Over far, We'll know you for the woman That you are."

"What turn of card, what trick of game Undiced? And you we valued still a little More than Christ."

"Ah God! she settles down we say; It means her powers slip away It means she draws back day by day From good or bad."

"Somewhere beneath her hurried curse, A corpse lies bounding in a hearse; And friends and relatives disperse, And are not stirred."

"What turn of body, what of lust Undiced? So we've worshipped you a little More than Christ."

"One sees you sitting in the sun Asleep; With the sweeter gifts you had And didn't keep, One grieves that the altars of Your vice lie deep."

"We watched her come with subtle fire And learned feet, Stumbling among the lustful drunk Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks Flame in her eyes; For when a woman lives in awful haste A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night And made them gay, Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul And fouled its play."

"The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other’s bed, where the rival perfects the lover’s imperfections."

"I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat."

"Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact."

"Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations."

"The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment."

"One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it."

"In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time."

"Destiny and history are untidy."

"A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?"

"Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself."

"A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same."

"Contemporary writers and artists praised her style, feared her tongue; she was a beauty, but a talented, acerbic, and powerfully intelligent one."

"Complex in her privacy, refusing to be controlled by an audience or pinioned to a single representation, she once told Henry Ramont of the New York Times, "I used to be invited by people who said, 'Get Djuna for dinner, she's amusing.' So I stopped it.""

"She was a spendthrift of the spirit, an American in Paris when, as Evelyn Waugh said, the going was good."

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."

"I think fiction rescues history from its confusions."

"I'm a novelist, period. An American novelist."

"I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become."

"I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read...I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from."

"Popular culture is inescapable in the U.S. Why not use it?"

"The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now."

"I think what'll happen in the not-too-distant future is that we'll have humane wars. Each side agrees to use clean bombs. And each side agrees to limit the amount of megatons he uses. In other words, we'll get together with them beforehand and there'll be an agreement that if the issue can't be settled, whatever the issue might be, then let's make sure we keep our war as relatively clean as possible."

"Of course the humanistic mind crumbles at the whole idea. It's the most hideous thing in the world to these people that such ideas even have to be mentioned. But the thing won't go away. The thing is here and you have to face it. The prospect of a humane war may be hideous and all the other names you can think of, but it's still a prospect. And as an alternative to all the other things that could happen in the event of war, it's relatively acceptable."

"War is the ultimate realization of modern technology."

"I reject the notion of football as warfare. Warfare is warfare. We don't need substitutes because we've got the real thing."

"I had centered myself, learning of the existence of an interior motion, a shift in the levels from isolation to solitude to wordlessness to immobility. When Opel occupied that center I became the thing that swirled."

"Evil is movement towards void."

"I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version."

"If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely."

"In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices."

"Who will die first?"

"I want to immerse myself in American magic and dread."

"All plots tend to move deathwards. This is the nature of plots."

"Every disaster made us wish for something bigger, grander, more sweeping."

"To become a crowd is to keep out death."

"I heard a noise, faint, monotonous, white."

"No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die."

"I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it."

"California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom."

"The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true."

"The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream."

"It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point."

"When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying."

"Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species."

"We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others. We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.”"

"He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation."

"He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it."

"The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe." "As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe...Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes."

"Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain? Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. How do I know I really want to go and it isn't just some neurons firing or something? Maybe it's just an accidental flash in the medulla and suddenly there I am in Montana and I find out I really didn't want to go there in the first place. I can't control what happens in my brain, so how can I be sure what I want to do ten seconds from now, much less Montana next summer? It's all this activity in the brain and you don't know what's you as a person and what's some neuron that just happens to fire or just happens to misfire."

"Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom."

"The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers.[…]They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn’t matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead."

"The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities."

"The future belongs to crowds."

"When a writer doesn't show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God's famous reluctance to appear."

"There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated."

"Remember literature, Charlie? It involved getting drunk and getting laid."

"Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror."

"Terror makes the new future possible. All men one man, Men live in history as never before. He is saying we make an change history minute by minute. History is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch."

"I had more flow as a designer. I could just drop down into the zone and stay there for hours. With cartooning, I'm constantly coming up for air, procrastinating, looking for reasons not to be doing it. I spend all day granting myself special dispensation, with 'creative process' as my cover story. Carpenters and deli countermen can't do that, so I think they may feel better about themselves at the end of the day."

"Whether you think we belong in Iraq or not, we can't tune it out; we have to remain mindful of the terrible losses that individual soldiers are suffering in our name."

"I, for one, think good political cartoons retain their value for decades. You can learn a lot from those old "Doonesbury" books."

"Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo."

"The American public highly overrates its sense of humor. We're great belly laughers and prat fallers, but we never really did have a real sense of humor. Not satire anyway. We're a fatheaded, cotton-picking society. When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery."

"You've got to be a misanthrope in this business, a real son of a bitch. I'm touchy. I've got raw nerve ends, and I'll jump. If I see a stuffed shirt, I want to punch it."

"I was a born troublemaker and might as well earn a living at it."

"If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes."

"My outlook on warfare is best illustrated by a cartoon I did some thirty-odd years ago of a soldier in an Italian foxhole reading about the Normandy invasion and observing to his buddy that: "The hell this ain't the most important hole in the world. I'm in it.""

"Willie and Joe are my creatures. Or am I their creature? They are not social reformers. They're much more reactive. They're not social scientists and I'm not a social scientist. We're moral people who do not belong to the moral majority. One of my principles is, Thou shall not bully. The only answer is to muscle the bully. I'm very combative that way."

"I would like to thank the people who encouraged me to draw army cartoons at a time when the gag man's conception of the army was one of mean ole sergents and jeeps which jump over mountains."

"I'm convinced that the infantry is the group in the army which gives more and gets less than anybody else."

"I haven't tried to picture this war in a big, broad-minded way. I'm not old enough to understand what it's all about, and I'm not experienced enough to judge its failures and successes. My reactions are those of a young guy who has been exposed to some of it, and I try to put those reactions in my drawings. Since I'm a cartoonist maybe I can be funny after the war, but nobody who has seen this war can be cute about it while it's going on. The only way I can try to be a little funny is to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don't think life could be any more miserable."

"Many celebrities and self-appointed authorities have returned from quick tours of war zones (some of them getting within hearing distance of the shooting) and have put out their personal theories to batteries of photographers and reporters. Some say the American soldier is the same clean-cut young man who left his home; others say morale is sky-high at the front because everybody's face is shining for the great Cause. They are wrong. The combat man isn't the same clean-cut lad because you don't fight a kraut by Marquess of Queensberry rules. You shoot him in the back, you blow him apart with mines, you kill or maim him the quickest and most effective way you can with the least danger to yourself. He does the same to you. He tricks you and cheats you, and if you don't beat him at his own game you don't live to appreciate your own nobleness. But you don't become a killer. No normal man who has smelled and associated with death ever wants to see any more of it. In fact, the only men who are even going to want to bloody noses in a fist fight after this war will be those who want people to think they were tough combat men, when they weren't. The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry."

"I don't make the infantryman look noble, because he couldn't look noble even if he tried. Still there is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and niceties. Their nobility and dignity come from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other."

"While a guy at home is sweating over his income tax and Victory garden, a dogface somewhere is getting great joy out of wiggling his little finger. He does it just to see it move and to prove to himself that he is still alive and able to move it."

"More than anyone else, save only Ernie Pyle, he caught the trials and travails of the GI. For anyone who wants to know what it was like to be an infantryman in World War II, this book is the place to start — and finish."

"I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but the krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us."

"Sergeant Bill Mauldin seemed to us over there to be the finest cartoonist the war had produced. And that's not merely because his cartoons are funny, but because they are also terribly grim and real. Mauldin's cartoons aren't about training-camp life, which is most familiar to people at home. They are about the men in the line — the tiny percentage of our vast Army who are actually doing the dying. His cartoons are about the war."

"It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."

"“We’ll have fun without you”"

"The flagpole that had flown at half-mast the day Cecilia died, though it had been summer and no one but the lawn crew had noticed"

"Everybody had a story as to why she tried to kill herself. Mrs. Buell said the parents were to blame. "That girl didn't want to die," she told us. "She just wanted out of that house." Mrs. Scheer added, "she wanted out of that decorating scheme.""

"The small statue of a girl… donated in memory of Laura White, her bronze skirt just beginning to oxidize. Scars crossed her welded wrists, symbolically, but the Lisbon girls didn’t notice."

"“I knew I had to close that window or else she’d go on jumping out of it forever.”"

"A series of dissolves, their house, street, city, country, and finally planet, which not only dwarfs but obliterates them."

"The girls were right in choosing to love Trip, because he was the only boy who could keep his mouth shut."

"We realised that the version of the world they had rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass, they didn't give a damn about lawns."

"We realized that our fathers, brothers and uncles had been lying, and that .no one was ever going to love us for our good grades."

"“None of my daughters lacked for any love. We had plenty of love in our house.”"

"They knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all."

"We had never known them. They had brought us here to find that out."

"“Obviously, Doctor… you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.""

"We asked Father Moody whether he had discussed Cecilia’s death or the girls’ grief, but he said he hadn’t."

"The blue slate roof… visibly darkened. The yellow bricks turned brown… There were other signs of creeping desolation. The illuminated doorbell went out. The bird feeder fell in the back yard and was left on the ground… Mrs Higbie insisted that Mr Lisbon, using a long pole, had closed the outside shutters."

"Cecilia’s party had never been cleaned up. The paper tablecloth, spotted with mice droppings… A brownish scum of punch… sprinkled with flies… A profusion of withered balloons hung from the ceiling… The domino game still called for a three or a seven."

"The room’s changes- water bugs adhering to walls, one bobbing dead mouse- only heightened what hadn’t changed"

"You don’t understand me… I’m a teenager. I’ve got problems!"

"Vince Fusilli held up his lighter… It was the best we could do for an eternal flame."

"So much has been written about the girls in the newspapers, so much has been said over back-yard fences, or related over the years in psychiatrists’ offices, that we are certain only of the insufficiency of explanations."

"At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping, Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property."

"...Las Vegas is the only town in the world whose skyline is made up neither of buildings, like New York, nor of trees, like Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but signs."

"The demolition derby is, pure and simple, a form of gladiatorial combat for our times."

"He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about — "—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —" — all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said. "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said. He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch — lightning."

"Suddenly he is like a ping-pong ball in a flood of sensory stimuli, heart beating, blood coursing, breath suspiring, teeth grating, hand moving over the percale sheet over those thousands of minute warfy woofings like a brush fire, sun glow and the highlight on a stainless-steel rod, quite a little movie you have going on in that highlight there, Hondo, Technicolors, pick each one out like fishing for neon gumballs with a steam shovel in the Funtime Arcade, a ping-pong ball in a flood of sensory stimuli, all quite ordinary, but... revealing themselves for the first time and happening... Now... as if for the first time he has entered a moment in his life and known exactly what is happening to his senses now, at this moment, and with each new discovery it is as if he has entered into all of it himself, is one with it, the movie white desert of the ceiling becomes something rich, personal, his, beautiful beyond description, like an orgasm behind the eyeballs, and his A-rabs — A-rabs behind the eyelids, eyelid movies, room for them and a lot more in the five billion thoughts per second stroboscope synapses — his A-rab heroes, fine Daily Double horsehair mustaches wrapped about the Orbicularis Oris of their mouths — Face! The doctor comes back in and, marvelous, poor tight cone ass, doc, Kesey can now see into him."

"Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus … or off the bus.""

"He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe."

"A sect, incidentally, is a religion with no political power."

"Among other things Jonestown was an example of a definition well known to sociologists of religion: a cult is a religion with no political power."

"Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table."

"Interviewer: So you weren't surprised by the Dan Rather debacle?"

"The Internet is the modern form of knitting. In the old days women who had nothing to do would knit, but at least you got something out of it — a pair of socks, maybe a scarf, occasionally a little bedspread. That’s mostly what the Internet is, just passing the time. But unfortunately you are dealing with words that can have meaning."

"Interviewer: You didn't read The Right Stuff."

"At certain points, reading [A Man in Full] can even be said to resemble the act of making love to a three-hundred pound woman. Once she gets on top, it's over. Fall in love, or be asphyxiated. So you read and you grab and you even find delight in some of these mounds of material. Yet all the while you resist — how you resist! — letting three hundred pounds take you over."

"Images of cars and highways fill our literature, songs, movies and art, not just in America but worldwide. Books like "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac or "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe were among the first to romanticize driving and road trips. Old blues and early rock songs like "Route 66," "Brand New Cadillac," and "Goin' Mobile" further romanticized cars and highways for the postwar "Baby Boom" generation. Thousands of films and T.V. shows have focused on or predominantly featured cars and car chases: "Rebel Without a Cause," "American Graffiti," "Easy Rider," "Bullet," "The Dukes of Hazzard," the "James Bond" films, and at least half a dozen Burt Reynolds movies. The list goes on... All this pop culture, combined with relentless commercial advertising, has made cars an integral part of our personal identity. We have been taught to equate motor vehicles with wealth, power, romance, rebellion and freedom. Now, everywhere I go in the world, I see cars-millions and millions of cars-in Rome, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Bombay and Beijing. Everywhere there are huge traffic jams and poor air quality. The number of motor vehicles in the world is growing three times faster than the population."

"One of the shrewdest observers of our times, Tom Wolfe, used to be fond of employing the French term nostalgie de la boue, coined in 1855 by the French dramatist Émile Augier. It translates as “nostalgia for the mud.” Or what Merriam-Webster now defines as “attraction to what is crude, depraved, or degrading.”"

"I think the reason why we're so disconnected and depressing is that...we don't talk to God anymore - or rather, he doesn't talk to us. Remember back in the day? He used to just come out of nowhere. 'Abraham?! Guess who?!...that's right, it's God, you're a genius...' He would then tell them to do something and then BAM! it would get done. Who's he talking to now?!...I don't know! I think he's talking to those homeless guys that talk to themselves. You know, the ones that walk down the street arguing with themselves going 'I can't!...I can't!!!!!' ...what if at the other end of that conversation was 'You're the new leader!' 'I can't!...I can't!!!!!' They're not crazy homeless people...they're reluctant prophets!...better tip them an extra buck the next time you see 'em."

"We certainly showed those Afghanis for what those Saudis did. But hey, can’t dump where you eat, you know?"

"The FBI and the CIA, I really thought they had everything under control. I thought they knew what was going on with everybody. I thought they had a camera in the air in a satellite right now taking very accurate pictures of my prostate. I thought they had that kind of technology. I thought they knew everything about everybody, but it turns out they’re really no different than many other government bureaucracies, say, the Post Office or the Department of Motor Vehicles. Just, uh, you know, 50-60 year old men waiting for their pensions to kick in. Except for the three that let the attack [9/11] happen. They’ve been promoted."

"He [George W. Bush] was speaking in congress and he was saying "Why do they hate us? Because of what’s going on right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Except for me, of course. I took the presidency in a bureaucratic coup with the help of my father’s friends in the courthouse around the corner.""

"Do you think Beethoven had any inkling in even the darkest recesses of his unconscious, when he was deaf and sweating over his Fifth Symphony, that one day it would emit from some idiot’s pocket, and the response would be "Darn, it’s my mom"?"

"Pearl Harbor the movie, arguably, was worse than the invasion itself."

"I think, in most cases, the difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment."

"Where is all the porn coming from?! Why isn't the Christian right talking about porn?! Cause they want us to be jerking off by ourselves! They know they can't get to us; we're lost to them, but at least it'll keep us in our apartments!"

"In the digital age our idea of political activism is forwarding an e-mail. You copy four people and think, "I've done my part for today.""

"Do you remember when you used to be able to remember five phone numbers?"

"The only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment."

"Hey, please, if you don't know me, please take a few seconds just to judge me by how I look. Appreciate the laugh there, thank you very much."

"I don't want to offend people right out of the gate. I know that some of you believe and I certainly don’t want to mock the myths that define some of you, but um. I choose not to believe in God. That's ok still, i can do that, right? It's my choice to go through life filled with dread, panic and fear. ..because I think that's a more objective and real way to live. Just be like..."Aaaaahh, what's gonna happen?!" I think that's needed, honestly. And again I don't want to make fun of what you believe in. I think the reason Jesus is so popular, just on a celebrity level, is that he died at the peak of his career, ok. He was...hear me out....he was young, he was hot. He was well spoken from all accounts. I really think it would have been different had he lived longer, alright. Say had he gotten old enough to get bitter. Alright, just hear me out. Picture there's a third testament to the bible' alright. This point Jesus is in his 50's. He's got one apostle left. And the book opens with him knee deep in water saying, "I used to be able to do this!" The apostle's saying, "Come on...don't yell at the water, Jesus. Come on in. It's not your day, buddy. Come on. People are gathering for the wrong reason. Can we just go, please. Let's go to the deli...we'll have a sandwich. We'll try again tomorrow. Come on, yes you are God, come on. And again, you know, if you're a religious person, I understand why you believe. It makes you feel better, you know. But a lot of us do not have the patience or disposition to have faith or belief. Thank god there's medication for those people because if you're properly medicated, it will provide roughly the same effect as religion, you know. If you're on the right combination of anti-depressants, it will alleviate your ability to see the truth clearly and provide a false sense of hope."

"My dad is actually a manic depressive, which is very exciting half the time."

"I'm just saying, a lot of people are on medicine, they don't need to be. Because let's be honest folks, it isn't easy for anyone. And I think in most cases, the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment. And to be honest, in the day and age we live in now, if someone comes up to you and says, “I think you might be clinically depressed,” the proper response is, “Thank you, thank you very much. That means I’m awake." Is there any indication we shouldn’t be depressed— are you living on the same planet that I am? Did you ever think that depression is the reasonable human response to the rubbish we’re going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step, or at least into taking some different course of action so we might survive? Did you ever think that maybe it’s the happy people that are really messed up in the head? Where’s that spin on the situation? Maybe it's those guys. "Hey, how ya doing?" "I don't know, I feel great, again!" "Really, well, that's creepy and weird. Maybe you should be on medication. Clearly you're self-centered, delusional, narcissistic. I don't know, but you're draining me with your happy. Could you move along because I'm doing the big work, creating a world that functions properly in my brain.""

"How many friends do you really have, seriously? You people...like "I have lots of friends." You don't. You have a lot of shallow relationships with people that talk behind your back and you call that drama a life because you hate your job."

"There is no way I was buying my wife a gun, because, let's be honest, there is no way I wasn't getting shot with that gun. Buying my wife a gun is sorta like me saying "Y'know, I kinda wanna kill myself...but I want it to be a surprise.""

"To-day, whatever may annoy, The word for me is Joy, just simple Joy."

"Whate’er there be of Sorrow I’ll put off till To-morrow, And when To-morrow comes, why then ’T will be To-day and Joy again."

"For me, my craft is sailing on, Through mists to-day, clear seas anon. Whate’er the final harbor be ’T is good to sail upon the sea!"

"May the Christmastide bear you to the highest level of your desires, and the ebbing year leave you stranded upon the Golden Shores of Peace, Prosperity and Happiness"

"I walked beside the evening sea And dreamed a dream that could not be; The waves that plunged along the shore Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!""

"While we read history we make history ... Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer."

"With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, Washington at once selected, for the highest and most responsible stations, the three chief Americans who represented the three forces in the nation which alone could command success in the institution of the government. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay was the conscience. Washington's just and serene ascendancy was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused, and nothing less than that ascendancy could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him."

"There are certain great sentiments which simultaneously possess many minds and make what we call the spirit of the age. That spirit at the close of the last century was peculiarly humane. From the great Spanish Cardinal Ximenes, who refused the proposal of the Bishop Las Casas to enslave the Indians; from Milton, who sang, 'But man over man He made not Lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free', from John Selden, who said, 'Before all, Liberty', from Algernon Sidney, who died for it, from Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Richard Baxter, the Dissenter, with his great contemporary, George Fox, whose protest has been faithfully maintained by the Quakers; from Southern, Montesquieu, Hutcheson, Savage, Shenstone, Sterne, Warburton, Voltaire, Rosseau, down to Cowper and Clarkson in 1783 — by the mouths of all these and innumerable others Religion, Scepticism, Literature, and Wit had persistently protested against the sin of slavery. As early as 1705 Lord Holt had declared there was no such thing as a slave by the law of England. At the close of the century, four years before our Declaration, Lord Mansfield, though yearning to please the planters, was yet compelled to utter the reluctant 'Amen' to the words of his predecessor. Shall we believe Lord Mansfield, who lived in the time and spoke for it, when he declared that wherever English law extended — and it extended to these colonies — there was no man whatsoever so poor and outcast but had rights sacred as the king's; or shall we believe a judge eighty-four years afterwards, who says that at that time Africans were regarded as people 'who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect'? I am not a lawyer, but, for the sake of the liberty of my countrymen, I trust the law of the Supreme Court of the United States is better than its knowledge of history."

"The principle of our Revolution, as defined by its leaders with sublime simplicity, was, that as Liberty is a natural right of man, every man has consequent equal rights in society, subject indeed to limitation, but not to annihilation. 'But', cries Mister Douglas, in his Memphis speech last November. I quote his words, our fathers were not talking of Negroes, nor thinking of them ... they were speaking of white men, men of European birth, and they said they were equal, that is, equal to their brethren across the water. Well, it would have been perfectly easy to say, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white men of the European race upon this continent are created equal — to their brethren across the water; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; but that yellow, blacky brown, and red men have no such rights. It would have been very easy to say this. Our fathers did not say it, because they did not mean it. They were men who meant what they said, and who said what they meant, and meaning all men, they said all men. They were patriots asserting a principle and ready to die for it, not politicians pettifogging for the presidency."

"Mr. Douglas incessantly remembers to inform us in every speech he has made for a year past that, when the Constitution was formed, all the thirteen States but one recognized slavery by law; but he incessantly forgets to add that Pennsylvania in 1780 passed an act for the gradual abolition of slavery which freed everybody born in the State after its passage; that one day later Massachusetts decided that her Bill of Rights abolished slavery forever; that in 1784 Connecticut followed Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island at about the same time; that in 1792, soon after the Constitution was formed. New Hampshire, under her Bill of Rights, Vermont, by express assertion in her Constitution, New York in March, 1799, and New Jersey in 1804, gradually abolished slavery."

"That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President."

"I will not weary you with the proof of this. James Madison, who knew perhaps as well as any one what the makers of the Constitution meant, said, 'We intend this Constitution to be the great charter of Human Liberty to the unborn millions who shall enjoy its protection, and who should never see that such an institution as slavery was ever known in our midst'. And the Congress of 1787, in resigning its functions, echoed the meaning of his words in saying, 'Let it never be forgotten that the cause of the United States is the cause of human nature — not of white men nor black men nor red men nor brown men — but of man, of mankind."

"Our fathers, therefore, were fully alive to the scope of their words and their work; and thus, as I believe, the Constitution of the United States, in its essential spirit and intention, recognizes the essential manhood of Dred Scott as absolutely as it does that of the President, of the Chief Justice, or of any Senator of the United States. I think I have not unfairly stated the spirit of the age, the sentiments of the fathers, and the original doctrine of this government upon the question of slavery. The system was recognized by law, but it was considered an evil which Time was surely removing. And, as if to put this question at rest forever, to show that the framers of this government did not look forward to a continuance of slavery, Mr. Stephens of Georgia, the most sagacious of the living slavery leaders, says, in June of this year, 'The leading public men of the South, in our early history, were almost all against it. Jefferson was against it. This I freely admit, when the authority of their names is cited. It was a question which they did not, and perhaps could not, thoroughly understand at that time'."

"In like manner the Reverend Dr. William A. Smith, President of the Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, in his work upon the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery, deliberately repudiates Mr. Jefferson's view of slavery as a 'grossly offensive error', and attributes the anti-slavery movement to him – which is as wise as to attribute the motion of the earth to Galileo. Judge Wayne, in his late charge at Savannah upon the law against the slave-trade, confirms Mr. Stephens's statement. And, as if to establish it by the most unexpected testimony, Mr. Edward Everett, in his late discourse upon Daniel Webster, said, 'In common with all, or nearly all, the statesmen of the last generation, he believed that free labor would ultimately prevail throughout the continent'."

"If there be any fact in our history beyond dispute it is that Roger Sherman expressed the universal sentiment of our fathers when he said, 'The abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees complete it'. In that spirit the compromises of the Constitution were made. Had not slavery at that time deprecated itself as an evil, the Constitution could not have been formed. Could the future have been foreseen, it would not have been formed. But, reasoning from the light they had, it was fair to believe as they believed, that, when the slave-trade was prohibited, the system would wither away under the double curse of Morality and Law."

"Now, so far as we may ascribe any great historic result to a single cause, it is the cotton-gin which has thwarted the Constitution and defeated the expectation of our fathers. The cotton-gin — which in seven years saw a crop twenty times as large as before; the cotton-gin, which enabled a man to pick a thousand pounds of cotton in a day instead of one pound — has seemed also to pick the moral perceptions out of the minds of a great many sober and kindly people; to pick all the intention, the spirit, the humanity, the meaning, the very soul, out of the Constitution of the United States, making it not the charter of equal freedom to all who are subject to it, but a mere commercial band by which a part of the population are compelled, directly or indirectly, to hold another part in slavery."

"From the invention of the cotton-gin slavery became a progressive system — not passively tolerated as in process of extinction, but actively striving for development and extension. It became a conscious political power. It made no offensive professions. It still deprecated itself as an evil, so difficult to deal with, and, with an adroit allusion to Ham and Onesimus, it smoothed the ecclesiastical conscience of the country and only asked to be let alone. And it was let alone. The War of 1812, and the consequent commercial confusion and renewed devotion to trade, held the country torpid upon the subject. If anybody looked at slavery inquisitively, it folded its hands demurely upon its breast and said, 'I am such a dreadful thing! How unfortunate that I should exist! What can be done with me? Just please to let me alone, that is all I want. A leper, you see; a miserable leper!'."

"And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise."

"The advantage it had gained it has steadily maintained. 'This is our matter, you know', it said. 'Just please let us alone'. It was let alone. Texas was ceded for Florida, completing the sea-line of slavery; and when slavery was ready Texas was taken back again, as when, afterwards, slavery had secured its share of the bargain, the Missouri Compromise was broken. In due order came the Mexican war and its consequences, the Fugitive-slave Bill and the loud chatter about saving the Union, so incessant that every thoughtful man asked himself. Is the casket more than the gem — the body than the soul — the Union than liberty? Then came the bloody tragedy of Kansas, with its justification by the President of the United States and by the Chief Justice; and I think no one will deny that Mr. Stephens is correct in calmly congratulating himself that slavery has carried all the important objects for which it has striven."

"For what do we now see in the country? We see a man who, as Senator of the United States, voted to tamper with the public mails for the benefit of slavery, sitting in the President's chair. Two days after he is seated we see a judge rising in the place of John Jay — who said, 'Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God' — to declare that a seventh of the population not only have no original rights as men, but no legal rights as citizens. We see every great office of State held by ministers of slavery ; our foreign ambassadors not the representatives of our distinctive principle, but the eager advocates of the bitter anomaly in our system, so that the world sneers as it listens and laughs at liberty. We see the majority of every important committee of each house of Congress carefully devoted to slavery. We see throughout the vast ramification of the Federal system every little postmaster in every little town professing loyalty to slavery or sadly holding his tongue as the price of his salary, which is taxed to propagate the faith. We see every small Custom-House officer expected to carry primary meetings in his pocket and to insult at Fourth-of-July dinners men who quote the Declaration of Independence. We see the slave-trade in fact, though not yet in law, reopened — the slave-law of Virginia contesting the freedom of the soil of New York We see slave-holders in South Carolina and Louisiana enacting laws to imprison and sell the free citizens of other States. Yes, and on the way to these results, at once symptoms and causes, we have seen the public mails robbed — the right of petition denied — the appeal to the public conscience made by the abolitionists in 1833 and onward derided and denounced, and their very name become a byword and a hissing. We have seen free speech in public and in private suppressed, and a Senator of the United States struck down in his place for defending liberty. We have heard Mr. Edward Everett, succeeding brave John Hancock and grand old Samuel Adams as governor of the freest State in history, say in his inaugural address in 1836 that all discussion of the subject which tends to excite insurrection among the slaves, as if all discussion of it would not be so construed, 'has been held by highly respectable legal authorities an offence against the peace of the commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law'. We have heard Daniel Webster, who had once declared that the future of the slave was 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death', now declaring it to be 'an affair of high morals' to drive back into that doom any innocent victim appealing to God and man, and flying for life and liberty. We have heard clergymen in their pulpits preaching implicit obedience to the powers that be, whether they are of God or the Devil — insisting that God's tribute should be paid to Caesar, and, by sneering at the scruples of the private conscience, denouncing every mother of Judea who saved her child from the sword of Herod's soldiers."

"We have heard popular orators declaiming to audiences to whose fathers James Otis and Samuel Adams spoke, and whose fathers' cheeks would have burned with shame and their hearts tingled with indignation to hear, that the Declaration of Independence was the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, and its doctrine of equal human rights a glittering generality. And finally, throwing off the mask altogether, but still whining to be let alone, we see this system, grown now from seven hundred thousand to four millions of slaves, declaring that it is in a peculiar sense a divine and Christian institution; that it is right in itself and a blessing, not a bane; that it is ineradicable in the soil; that it is directly recognized and protected by the Constitution of the United States ; that its rights under that Constitution are to be maintained at all hazards ; and haw they are maintained we may see in the slave States, by the absolute annihilation of free speech and by codes of law insulting to humanity and common-sense ; and how they are to be maintained in the new States we have seen in the story of Kansas. It declares that, the Congress of the United States being a slave instrument and being also the supreme law of the land, the rights of the slave States are to be protected from injury by the suppression in the free States of what shall be decided by the United States Courts to be incendiary discussion; and at last it openly announces, by its representative leaders in Congress, that if a majority of the people of the United States shall elect a government holding what they allow to have been the principles of the founders of the government upon this question, they will hesitate at no steps to destroy the Union."

"So vast has been the change in the claim and position of slavery! So entirely has it reversed the classic story, and the blind, begging Belisarius has become the imperial general! So proudly, in such long and dazzling and magnificent array, stands Xerxes at the fiery pass of war! And where is Leonidas? Where is liberty?"

"Still, slavery professes only to wish its rights. It only wants to be let alone. Of course, what else could it want? And what else is the secret of the present state of the country? Under the plea of being let alone — that it was a dreadful thing and only wanted to mind its own business — it has quietly possessed itself, one after another, of all the outworks of the Constitution, and now seeks to intrench itself finally in the citadel."

"It was no further from the compromises of 1850 to the repeal of the Missouri bill in 1854, than it was from the annexation of Texas in 1845 to the compromises. Slavery had no reason to fear that it could not take one more step, and one more, every few years. If freedom will bear a pinch, it argued, it will bear a blow. If a blow, a kick. If a kick, we'll throw it and throttle it. The burglar who has quietly mounted one stair does not see why he may not mount the next. There is a risk; that is all. The master of the house sleeps quietly on. The burglar mounts another stair. Still the sleeper sleeps. Another. There is no motion yet. He mounts another. No reason for alarm. Hist! the last stair creeks ; the master awakes — springs to his feet — grasps his weapon — aims — fires. Do you think he will sleep again ? I don't believe he will."

"This attempt to usurp the government by subverting the Constitution of the United States was the policy of the greatest leader the system of slavery has ever had in this country — that pagan of our politics, Mr. Calhoun. While other statesmen merely saw, he foresaw. His mind, of large forecast and comprehensive grasp, perceived that the logic of history, of civilization, of our national idea, of the universal conscience, was against slavery. But he had seen the conscience of the country, roused for a moment in the Missouri debate, drop asleep again. And with the audacity of genius he resolved to stun the country into acquiescence by claiming that slavery was the fundamental law of the land."

"In 1850 Mr. Calhoun said, 'Let us be done with compromises. Let us go back and stand upon the Constitution'. Four years afterwards, the most Christian and most democratic statesman we have had in our history since Washington, Mr. Seward, accepted the challenge thrown out by Mr. Calhoun, solemnly saying, 'The sands of compromise are sliding from beneath my feet, and they are taking hold once more of the rock of the Constitution'."

"The debate forced upon the mind of the country this question. Does the Constitution, made at the time we know, by the men we know, holding the views we know, for the distinct intention it declares, stultify itself by securing the destruction of its expressed purposes?"

"The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J.Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what ? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff ; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever."

"Government is, unquestionably, a science of compromises, but only of policies and interests, not of essential rights; and if of them, then the sacrifice must fall equally on all."

"Up to this time the argument of the abolitionists, who since 1833 had been storming the national conscience — for they knew the real citadel of a nation — with the assertion that slavery was an absolute wrong, had been met by the reply, 'Yes, yes; we know all about that. Of course it's a great wrong. The South agrees to that. It's dreadful sorry about it — but it's got the nasty thing, and it says if we'll only let it alone it will settle itself. Slavery is one of those things that work out themselves. The more you talk the worse it is. Besides, it's their own affair; we've nothing to do with it. Let 'em alone ! Let 'em alone !'."

"And the clergy said, 'Certainly, you're quite right; the disease is awful. Therefore, the only way is to let it alone. Amen. A contribution will now be taken up to extend Gospel privileges to the Philippine Islands'. The abolitionists retorted by declaring that you might as well let fire alone, by telling the free States that they were bound to thrust back fugitives, and were, therefore, themselves the mere bloodhounds and slaves of slavery, which could only live by expansion, and only wanted to be let alone to become impregnable."

"'Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense!' was the reply, 'that's all very well in theory, but it doesn't work so. The returning of slaves amounts to nothing in fact. All that is obsolete. And why make all this row? Can't you hush ? We've nothing to do with slavery, we tell you. We can't touch it; and if you persist in this agitation about a mere form and theory, why, you're a set of pestilent fanatics and traitors; and if you get your noisy heads broken, you get just what you deserve'. And they quoted in the faces of the abolitionists the words of Governor Edward Everett, who was not an authority with them, in that fatal inaugural address, 'The patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invited to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave'. It was as if some kindly Pharisee had said to Christ, 'Don't try to cast out that evil spirit; it may rend the body on departing'. Was it not as if some timid citizen had said, 'Don't say hard things of intemperance lest the dram-shops, to spite us, should give away the rum'? And so the battle raged. The abolitionists dashed against slavery with passionate eloquence like a hail of hissing fire. They lashed its supporters with the scorpion whip of their invective. Ambition, reputation, ortune, ease, life itself they threw upon the consuming altar of their cause. Not since those earlier fanatics of freedom, Patrick Henry and James Otis, has the master chord of human nature, the love of liberty, been struck with such resounding power. It seemed in vain, so slowly their numbers increased, so totally were they outlawed from social and political and ecclesiastical recognition. The merchants of Boston mobbed an editor for virtually repeating the Declaration of Independence. The city of New York looked on and smiled while the present United States marshal insulted a woman as noble and womanly and humane as Florence Nightingale. In other free States men were flying for their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, murdered ; but still as, in the bitter days of Puritan persecution in Scotland, the undaunted voices of the Covenanters were heard singing the solemn songs of God that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak of the barren mountains, until the great dumb wilderness was vocal with praise — so in little towns and great cities were heard the uncompromising voices of these men sternly intoning the majestic words of the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, which echoed from solitary heart to heart until the whole land rang with the litany of liberty."

"But still the great public opinion of the free States was unmoved. It cried angrily, 'You're only making matters worse. It's very hard, but what can we do? It's none of our business. It's none of our business'. But when 1850 came, and theory was found to be fact, when the man who was angrily crying, 'It's none of my business, what have I to do with slavery?' suddenly felt the quivering, panting fugitive clinging to his knees — a wretched, forlorn, outcast, hunted man, guilty of no crime but color, and begging the succor that no honest man would refuse to a cur cowering on his threshold — then, as he stood aghast and heard Slavery thundering at his door, 'I am the law. Give me my prey! Give me my prey!' he felt God knocking at his heart, 'Whoso doeth it unto the least of these my little ones, doeth it unto me'."

"Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his ; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone ; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured."

"The country was divided between the Whig and Democratic organizations. The Democratic Party then, as now, was in open alliance with slavery, in a conspiracy against the Constitution and the peace of the country. Of that there was no hope; and when the Whig party at Baltimore with fabulous fatuity dodged the question, the great Whig party, newly painted and repaired, with all its guns burnished, its drums beating and colors flying, went down in a moment clean out of sight, like the Royal George at Spithead, and of all that stately craft there remain but a few ancient mariners drifting half-drowned in the water, and sputtering with winking eyes that the ship had better try another voyage."

"Out of the chaos that followed the so-called final settlement of the slavery question in 1850 arose the great political antislavery party, whose vital force is in the conscience of its supporters, whose central idea is the original American principle, the equality of human rights, and whose unswerving policy is the planting of the government ineradicably upon that principle. It is a party of ideas and interests combined. It holds with Jefferson that God has no attribute which can take part with slavery. It looks anxiously with Washington for the means by which it can be abolished. It seeks with the framers of the Northwest Ordinance to exclude it from the territories, because it is at war with the essential principles of the government and with the expressed intention of the Constitution. I confess I secretly suspect the Republicanism of an orator who is more anxious to show his hearers that he respects what he calls the rights of slavery than that he loves the rights of man. If God be just and the human instinct true, slavery has no rights at all. It has only a legalized toleration. Have I a right to catch a weaker man than I, and appropriate him, his industry, and his family, forever, against his will, to my service? Because if I have, any man stronger than I has the same right over me. But if I have not, what possible right is represented by the two thousand million dollars of property in human beings in this country? It is the right of Captain Kidd on the sea, of Dick Turpin on the land. I certainly do not say that every slave-holder is a bad man, because I know the contrary. The complicity of many with the system is inherited, and often unwilling. But to rob a man of his liberty, to make him so far as possible a brute and a thing, is not less a crime against human nature because it is organized into a hereditary system of frightful proportions. A wrong does not become a right by being vested."

"If the slave-power could now in good faith stand where the fathers stood, with the added lights of experience shining upon the question, asking sympathy and co-operation in a system of emancipation, pleading that it was unfair to ask them to make greater sacrifices than other men are willing to make, allowing that it was a common evil, the cost and trouble of whose removal should be cheerfully borne by all, or if the laws of any slave state looked towards the gradual relief of the difficulty, there is not an honest man in the North or the South whose heart would not tremble with joy as he contemplated the destiny of his country."

"And as I understand the Republican party, while it steadily holds that slavery is in itself a wrong, it does not forget human conditions and the actual state of things, and, therefore, that the questions of planting slavery in fresh territory and of removing it where it is in wrought in a system of society are very different, as different as the prevention and the cure of disease. The question of the moment, then, is simply whether the most unrelenting and permanent despotism can be justified by the Constitution of the United States. That is, whether the makers of the government meant that the democratic-republican principle should gradually, but surely, disappear from that government. There are, therefore, but two parties, one holding that a system of free society, the other that one of slave society, is the real intention of the government. These parties are sectionally divided in situation, but they both aim to have their idea become the national policy. The party of slavery, indeed, is divided in its own camp, but only upon a minor question. The point of difference between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Buchanan is not whether all men under this government have rights, but simply in what way those who deprive them of those rights shall be most securely protected. Mr. Douglas argues that the slave party is the only national party; 'because', he says, 'so long as we live under a common Constitution, any political creed which cannot be proclaimed wherever that Constitution is the supreme law of the land must be ruinous and fatal'. He makes short work of it For it is a matter of fact that the creed of equal human and consequent political rights cannot be proclaimed everywhere in the country; and therefore whoever, in the present juncture of our affairs, can proclaim his entire political creed as frankly in Charleston as in Boston, can do it only because he has stricken from the list our distinctive national principle, without which we are not Americans at all — the natural equal rights of men. If Washington or Jefferson or Madison should utter upon his native soil today the opinions he entertained and expressed upon this question, he would be denounced as a fanatical abolitionist. To declare the right of all men to liberty is sectional, because slavery is afraid of liberty and strikes the mouth that speaks the word. To preach slavery is not sectional — no: because freedom respects itself and believes in itself enough to give an enemy fair play. Thus Boston asked Senator Toombs to come and say what he could for slavery. I think Boston did a good thing, but I think Senator Toombs is not a wise man, for he went. He went all the way from Georgia to show Massachusetts how slavery looks, and to let it learn what it has to say. When will Georgia ask Wendell Phillips or Charles Sumner to come down and show her how liberty looks and speaks?"

"If a man cannot stand up in Charleston or Savannah or Richmond and say that he believes the right of every man to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness to be self-evident ; if he be tarred and feathered for saying it, or ridden upon a rail, or ducked in a horse-pond, or driven out of his pulpit or professorial chair, or shot down in his office, or waited upon by a committee who cannot be answerable for the chivalric impatience of their fellow-citizens — Mr. Douglas says it is a proof that his political principles are ruinous and fatal; which is simply the argument of a highway robber to his victim whom he knocks on the head, that if he didn't carry so much money in his pocket he wouldn't be robbed."

"The party which is humorously called the Douglas Democracy no more recognizes the rights declared by the Declaration of Independence to be inalienable than does the party of the administration. Its leader repudiates the theory that the Constitution establishes slavery, but he does not perceive in it, or in the circumstances of its adoption, or in the expressed sentiments and actions of its framers, any reason to suppose that it favors liberty more than slavery. He leaves all human rights at the mercy of a majority, and insists that the Constitution does the same."

"Mister Douglas in his speech at Memphis expressly says, 'Whenever a territory has a climate, soil, and productions making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pass a slave-code and give it encouragement'. He adds that they have a right to do it, and in his late speech at Columbus he declares that there must be no interference with any action of any state, insisting, according to the report, amid great laughter at the exquisite humor of the witticism, 'If you go over to Virginia to steal her Negroes, I trust she will catch you and put you in jail with other thieves'. Ah, Mr. Douglas! Mr. Douglas! if the little child just born to you were stolen from your arms and sold into slavery, and you went through fire and water to rescue her, would you say so airily, so jauntily, with such pleasant humor, that if you went to steal her you trust you would be caught and put in jail with other thieves? And yet not more do you love that child hanging at this moment upon her mother's bosom, than an old slave mother whom I know in the hospital across the river loved the child who forty years ago was torn from her breast and sold, and of whose fate for forty years that silent, sorrowing Rachel has not heard?"

"This negative doctrine of Mr. Douglas that there are no rights anterior to governments is the end of free society. If the majority of a political community have a right to establish slavery if they think it for their interest, they have the same right to declare who shall be enslaved. The doctrine simply substitutes the despotic, irresponsible tyranny of many for that of one. If the majority shall choose that the interest of the State requires the slaughter of all infants born lame, of all persons more than seventy years of age, they have the right to slaughter them, according to what is called the Democratic doctrine. Do you think this a ludicrous and extreme case? But if the majority have a right to deprive a man of his liberty at their pleasure, they have an equal right to take his life. For life is no more a natural right than liberty. The individual citizen, according to Mr. Douglas, is not secure in his person, in his property, in his family, for a single moment from the whim or the passion or the deliberate will of the majority, if expressed as law. Might is not right. I have the power to hold a child by the throat until he turns purple and dies. But I have not the right to do it. A State or a Territory has the power to steal a man's liberty or labor, and to hold him and his children's children forever in slavery. It has the power to do this to any man of any color, of any age, of any country, who is not strong enough to protect himself. But it has no more right to do it to an African than to an American or an Irishman, no more right to do it to the most ignorant and forsaken foreigner than to the prosperous and honored citizen of its own country. Fiddle-fad-dle, says the Supreme Court of the United States, an African doesn't count. He is only a Negro. He has no friends. Hit him again! And, now that we have decided the matter, what are you going to do about it? We are going to do what Patrick Henry did in Virginia, what James Otis and Samuel Adams did in Massachusetts, what the Sons of Liberty did in New York, ninety years ago. We are going to agitate, agitate, agitate. You say you want to rest. Very well, so do we — and don't blame us if you stuff your pillow with thorns. You say you are tired of the eternal Negro. Very well, stop trying to turn a man into a thing because he happens to be black, and you'll stop our mouths at the same time. But while you keep at your work, be perfectly sure that we shall keep at ours. If you are up at five o'clock, we shall be up at four. We shall agitate, agitate, agitate, until the Supreme Court, obeying the popular will, proclaims that all men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away."

"The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service."

"Therefore our Constitution will always be the measure of our national morality; and if we were all sorry, it would still be true. I am not sorry, for it founds the government in the character of the people, and hence everything in the future depends upon the popular faith in the original principles of the government. If the people of this country do believe with the fathers that there are self-evident, original, and indefeasible human rights, then slavery will surely, quietly, and legally be terminated, under the Constitution of the United States. If they do not believe that there are such rights, then slavery will, just as surely, quietly, and legally, be established under the Constitution, which, as the paramount law of the land, will legalize it in New York as well as in Alabama, leaving the policy of adopting it to be decided by individual judgment."

"Such is the present aspect of the slavery question. For myself, I believe that the faith in which the government was founded still survives. I believe that the spirit of despotism which now says to the country, 'I will rule or ruin', will hear the imperial voice of the conscience of the American people, recognizing that justice and prosperity walk hand in hand, saying, 'You will do neither'. I believe that God did not hide this continent through all time as the spot whereon a nation should be planted upon the only principle that can render a nation as permanent as the race, to suffer the experiment to fail within a century. I believe these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you believe it? If aye, let us go into the battle, and God speed the right."

"It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods. But, as we climb the Alps and, emerging from the morass and forest, set once more the sun and the broad landscape, we may fairly shout and sing, although we are still toiling on, and are yet far below the pure peaks towards which we go. In our Revolution, a man who saw distinctly, as we can now see, that the triumph of Great Britain would have imperiled constitutional liberty everywhere, surely had a right to rejoice over the victory of Saratoga, though it was not the end of the war. The battle did not end the war, indeed. The Tories sneered and bade the Yankees wait. They did wait. They waited from Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga to Comwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Yankee pluck, as usual, waited until it won, as in later days it waited from Bull Run to Richmond. The battle of Saratoga was a skirmish compared with our later battles, but it was a fatal blow to Tory supremacy upon this continent. It was a gleam of sunshine in which it was right to shout and sing, for it was another great gain in the 'Good Fight of Man'."

"[Human]] history is the story of that 'Good Fight', of the effort of man to attain that universal liberty to which, he feels himself born. All wars are but battles in this war. It is fought by the tongue and pen as earnestly as with the sword and shell. It is called by various names. The combatants rally under various banners. Whatever in human nature is hopeful, generous, aspiring, the love of God and trust in man, is arrayed on one side. The meaner passions, the baser purpose, stand upon the other."

"But the two sides are always plainly apparent in every form of the struggle, and every man inevitably shows his colors. We are all Butternuts or Bluecoats. A modem Protestant clergyman, for instance, who boils down his Bible to distill from it the one black drop of slavery, and who excuses the most horrible crimes by the sending back of Onesimus and the cursing of Ham, joins hands with the Romish Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, and burns human freedom at the stake. The scientific scholar, who from the forma- tion of Tom's shin-bone proves that Dick may whip Tom's wife and sell his children, fights in the ranks with the cruel skill that used the thumb-screw and the boots to frighten the mind from freedom. And an American convention which solemnly resolves, with one in Pennsylvania lately, that to confer the right of suffrage upon any person but a white man is a crime against the Constitution and a degradation of the white race, helps Philip II. of Spain to crush the Netherlands, fights with the redcoats at Saratoga, tears the Declaration of Independence, and fires at the flag of the United States a more shameful shot than that at Sumter."

"And, on the other hand, the Greek Leonidas choking the pass against the Persian torrent, the Italian Galileo holding fast his scientific faith in the teeth of the Church of Rome, Robert Small steering his bold boat under the guns of slavery straight towards the flag of freedom, Abraham Lincoln patiently saving civil liberty, are all, in their times and countries, soldiers of the true cross, heroes and martyrs of the Good Fight."

"The part assigned to this country in the 'Good Fight of Man' is the total overthrow of the spirit of caste. Luther fought it in the form of ecclesiastical despotism; our fathers fought it as political tyranny; we have hitherto encountered it entrenched in a system of personal slavery. But in all these forms it is the same old spirit of the denial of equal rights. Martin Luther, the monk, had exactly the same right to his religious faith that Giovanni de' Medici, the pope, had to his. Galileo had the same right to hold and teach his scientific theories that the Church doctors had to teach theirs. Patrick Henry, a British subject, had the same right to refuse to be taxed without representation that Lord North, another British subject, had. Robert Small, one of the American people, had exactly the same right to vote upon the same qualifications with other citizens that the President has or the Chief Justice of the United States. The Inquisition in Italy, aristocratic privilege in England, chattel slavery or unfair political exclusion in the United States, are only fruits ripened upon the tree of caste. Our swords have cut off some of the fruit, but the tree and its roots remain, and now that our swords are turned into plough-shares and our Dahlgrens and Parrotts into axes and hoes, our business is to take care that the tree and all its roots are thoroughly cut down and dug up, and burned utterly away in the great blaze of equal rights."

"There is no gentleman in America, but he who feels that every man is his equal in natural right, and who does not know that he is cheated if every man does not have fair play."

"In January 1865, Louis Wigfall, one of the rebel chiefs, said, in Richmond, 'Sir, I wish to live in no country where the man who blacks my boots or curries my horse is my equal'. Three months afterwards, when the rebel was skulking away to Mexico, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, walked through the streets of Richmond and respectfully lifted his hat to the men who blacked Louis Wigfall's boots and curried his horse. What did it mean? It meant that the truest American president we have ever had, the companion of Washington in our love and honor, recognized that the poorest man, however outraged, however ignorant, however despised, however black, was, as a man, his equal. The child of the American people was their most prophetic man, because, whether as small shop-keeper, as flat-boatman, as volunteer captain, as honest lawyer, as defender of the Declaration, as President of the United States, he knew by the profoundest instinct and the widest experience and reflection, that in the most vital faith of this country it is just as honorable for an honest man to curry a horse and black a boot as it is to raise cotton or corn, to sell molasses or cloth, to practice medicine or law, to gamble in stocks or speculate in petroleum. He knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man. He stood with his hand on the helm, and saw the rebel colors of caste flying in the storm of war. He heard the haughty shout of rebellion to the American principle rising above the gale, 'Capital ought to own labor and the laborer, and a few men should monopolize political power'. He heard the cracked and quavering voice of medieval Europe in which that rebel craft was equipped and launched, speaking by the tongue of Alexander Stephens, 'We build on the comer-stone of slavery'. Then calmly waiting until the wildest fury of the gale, the living America, which is our country, mistress of our souls, by the lips of Abraham Lincoln thundered jubilantly back to the dead Europe of the past, 'And we build upon fair play for every man, equality before the laws, and God for us all'."

"It is not yet the Millennium. We have not yet reached these pure heights of civilization, the ascent to which is the Good Fight. But are we no nearer the summit because we do not stand upon it? Has the Good Fight gained nothing by the war? If you sail from Boston to Calcutta, when you are off Madagascar you are not yet in India, but you have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, you are not yet in India, but at least you are outside Boston Light. I do not say the country is yet beyond Boston Light, but if not, it is only because Boston Light is the sun of liberty that shines all over the world."

"There was a time indeed when it was not so, when the bold mariner, Roger Williams, sailed beyond the Boston Light of two centuries ago, and asked of the wilds of the Seekonk and the Mawshawsuc, 'What cheer? What cheer?' And the friendly solitudes answered, 'A truer liberty than you left behind'. And if Boston Light cheers the world to-day it is because the spirit of Roger Williams feeds the flame."

"What is our reckoning, then? How far are we towards Cathay? What advantages has the 'Good Fight of Man' gained in the war? We have shown, first, that a popular government, under which the poorest and the most ignorant of every race but one are equal voters with the richest and most intelligent, is the most powerful and flexible in history. It is proved to be neither violent nor cruel nor impatient, but fixed in purpose, faithful to its own officers, tolerant of vast expense, of enormous losses, of torturing delays, and strongest at the very points where fatal weakness was most suspected. 'If you put a million of men under arms you will inevitably end in a military despotism', said Europe. 'The re-absorption of an army is the most perilous problem of any nation'. And within six months of the surrender of Lee an English gentleman, Sir Morton Peto, found himself in a huge business office in Chicago, surrounded by scores of clerks quietly engaged with merchandise and ledgers. 'Did you go on so during the war?' he asked. 'Oh, no, Sir Morton. That young man was a corporal, that was a lieutenant, that was a major, that was a colonel. Twenty-seven of us were officers in the army'. 'Indeed!', said the English gentleman. And all Europe, looking across the sea at the same spectacle, magnified by hundreds of thousands, of citizens quietly re-engaged in their various pursuits, echoes the astonished exclamation, 'Indeed!' for it sees that a million of men were in arms for the very purpose of returning to their offices and warehouses to sell their merchandise and post their ledgers in tranquility. Yes, the great army that for four years shook this continent was only the Yankee constable going his rounds."

"European Toryism has long regarded us as a vulgar young giant sprawling and spitting over a continent, whose limbs were indeed too loose and ungainly to be very effective, but who might yet one day make trouble and require to be thrashed into decency and order. When Horace Greeley was in Paris, he was one morning looking with an American friend at the pictures in the gallery of the Louvre and talking of this country. 'The fact is', said Mister Greeley, 'that what we need is a darned good licking'. An Englishman who stood by and heard the conversation smiled eagerly, as if he knew a nation that would like to administer the castigation. 'Yes, sir', said he, complacently, rubbing his hands with appetite and joining in the conversation, 'that is just what you do want'. 'But the difficulty is', continued Mister Greeley to his friend as if he had heard nothing, 'the difficulty is that there's no nation in the world that can lick us'. It was true; so we turned to and licked ourselves. And it seems to me that a young giant who for the sake of order and humanity scourges himself at home, is not very likely wantonly to insult and outrage his neighbors. Indeed, measured by his neighbors who go marauding in India or China or Mexico, and through whose slippery neutral fingers a dozen privateers escape to sweep his commerce from the sea, he is an orderly and honorable citizen of the world. The British Tory mind did not believe that any popular government could subdue so formidable a rebellion. Mister Gladstone is not a Tory, but even he said, 'Great Britain could not do it, sir', and what Great Britain could not do he did not believe could be done. Perhaps he would have thought differently could he have heard what a friend of mine did when the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment passed through New York on its way to Washington. It was the first sign of war that New York had seen, and as Broadway stared gloomily at the soldiers steadily marching, my friend stepped into the street and, walking by the side of one of the ranks, asked the soldier nearest him from what part of the State he came. The soldier, solely intent upon stepping in time, made his reply in measure with the drum-beat, 'From Bunker Hill; from Bunker Hill; from Bunker Hill'."

"Mister Gladstone is an Englishman and a scholar. Had he walked by the side of that soldier, remembering Cromwell's Ironsides who trusted in God and kept their powder dry, and the old Continental militia, I think he would not have declared as he did that 'Jefferson Davis had created a nation', but he would rather have said, 'If Bunker Hill sends the first soldiers to this war, it is already decided. My lords and gentlemen, John Bull had better touch no American bonds which Bunker Hill does not endorse'."

"But the indication of the strength of our system was moral as well as physical. 'You cannot stand the strain of a civil war and of party spirit combined', said the skeptics. 'You will end in anarchy at the election'. I knew those who apprehended revolution and provisional governments as November approached. In hushed expectation election day dawned. You remember the old story of an agreement of everybody in the world to shout all together at the same moment upon a certain day, and make a noise that would be heard to the stars. The hour came; and it was the most silent moment ever known. The sole sound was the thin, weak cry of one deaf old woman. Everybody else in the world was listening for the prodigious noise. So the Great Election passed in perfect peace. The sun of the ninth of November rose, not upon a convulsed nation tumbling into anarchy, but standing calm, strong, and erect upon its two feet of Union and Liberty, and somewhere upon the ground the tip-end of the tail of a copperhead snake sneaking into his hole."

"The war has revealed an overpowering national instinct. The conflicting theories of the exact nature and limitations of our government had blinded the shrewdest minds to the fact that we were a nation, with all the feelings and instincts of a nation, and that our quarrels must be settled inside and not outside of the Union."

"Mister Toombs was willing to dissolve the Union to save slavery, Mister Phillips, to save liberty; while Mister Seward, denounced and derided by both, declared that the deepest instinct of the American people was for union. Reserved rights. State rights, limited powers, the advantages of union and disunion, were the cucumbers from which we were busily engaged in distilling light, overlooking the fact of nationality in discussing the conditions of union. We were speculating upon costume. We gravely proved that the clothes were the clothes of a woman, or of a child, without seeing that whatever the clothes might be there was a full-grown man inside of them. 'The Constitution is a contract between sovereign States', shouted Mister Toombs, 'let Georgia tear it and separate'. 'The Constitution is a league with hell', calmly replied Mister Phillips, 'let New York cut off New Orleans to rot alone'. 'Oh, dear! it's a dreadful dilemma', whimpered President Buchanan. 'States have no right to secede, and the United States have no right to coerce. Oh, dear me! it's perfectly awful! I'm the most patriotic of men, but what shall I do? what shall I do?' Separate! Cut off! Secede! It was of a living body they spoke, which, pierced anywhere, quivered everywhere."

"Our national unity was the secret of the force of each of the members. New York could not be New York nor Ohio be Ohio without Massachusetts and without Georgia. And a government which had not the right to coerce had not the right to exist."

"A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me'. 'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'."

"The foreboding statesman who knew how Greece had fallen asunder and perished, who knew the mean tenure of European leagues, who knew the absolute necessity of union and the jarring jealousies of sections, saw in the Constitution but a shadowy bond which foretold early separation and disaster. It was not strange when the Union was scarcely ten years old, still in the gristle, he heard the serpent of State sovereignty angrily hissing in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of '98."

"Hamilton doubted the cohesive force of the Constitution to make a nation. He was so far right, for no constitution can make a nation. That is a growth, and the vigor and intensity of our national growth transcended our own suspicions. It was typified by our material progress. General Hamilton died in 1804. In 1812, during the last war with England, the largest gun used was a thirty-six pounder. In the war just ended it was a two-thousand pounder. The largest gun then weighed two thousand pounds. The largest shot now weighs two thousand pounds. Twenty years after Hamilton died the traveler toiled painfully from the Hudson to Niagara on canal-boats and in wagons, and thence on horseback to Kentucky. Now he whirls from the Hudson to the Mississippi upon thousands of miles of various railroads, the profits of which would pay the interest of the national debt. So by a myriad influences, as subtle as the forces of the air and earth about a growing tree, has our nationality grown and strengthened, striking its roots to the centre and defying the tempest. Could the musing statesman who feared that Virginia or New York or Carolina or Massachusetts might rend the Union have heard the voice of sixty years later, it would have said to him, 'The babe you held in your arms has grown to be a man, who walks and runs and leaps and works and defends himself. I am no more a vapor, I am condensed. I am no more a germ, I am a life. I am no more a confederation, I am a nation'."

"Carolina or Virginia may try to break away. In the effort it may destroy its local government as it has now destroyed it, except by successful revolution no rebellious state can escape the jurisdiction, and it will be reorganized exclusively by the national authority of the United States of America. This is what Gettysburg roars and Vicksburg and Port Royal. This is the thunder of the Kearsarge as she sinks the Alabama, This is the song of Sherman's march to the sea; and Lee's surrender, the fall of Richmond, and the universal crash of the rebellion mutter and murmur their reluctant 'Amen, Amen'. But, at the same moment that the profound sense of nationality and the power of the nation are revealed, the national mind has gained a clear perception of the relation of morals and politics, the strict dependence of civil order and national prosperity upon morality."

"The relation between physical sanitary laws and the national welfare is now hardly disputed. At this moment the cholera is stealthily feeling its terrible way along the edges of Europe to this country, and there is not an intelligent man who does not know that it is a divine vengeance upon uncleanliness. Let it seize the unclean city of New York, and it will riot in horror and devastation. Panic will empty the palaces, trade will stop in the warehouses. Those who can will flee, while the poor and wretched, poisoned in tenement-houses, will be huddled in heaps of agony and death. Does any man say that cholera is God's remedy for overpopulation? On the contrary, it is only the ghastly proof that God's laws of human health are disregarded. It is not a proclamation that the world is over-peopled; it is merely a warning for the world to provide decently for its population. God does not create men in his image to rot in tenement-houses, and he will make squalor and filth and misery plague-spots threatening the fairest prosperity, until that prosperity acknowledges in vast sanitary reforms that cleanliness is next to godliness. And if the dread pestilence now approaching our shores would frighten us into universal purgation of our foul cities, it would be seen at this moment hovering in the wintry air, not an angry demon, but a stem angel with a sword of fire to open the path of knowledge and humanity and civilization."

"And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?"

"'Don't be visionary', shouted trade and the spiritual blindness which is absurdly called practical common sense, 'morals have nothing to do with politics'. 'Don't talk of injustice. In this world we must compromise. Compromise is the very essence of government'. So it is, if you do not attempt to compromise moral principle. 'All government', says Edmund Burke, 'is founded upon compromise and barter'. 'But in all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some proportion to the purchase paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel of the soul'. And what is and always has been the immediate jewel of our national soul if it be not the equal rights of men? Compromise equal rights in the United States? Whittle a crowbar? How do we like it, as the boys say, as far as we have got? You may compromise questions of cotton and com, but you cannot long compromise a point of conscience. Moral principles are absolute and eternal. You may stretch an inch of India rubber to cover your hat; you cannot stretch a diamond the shadow of a hair."

"We thought we could and we tried it. The breath of our national nostrils was equal rights. The jewel of our soul was fair play for all men. But, selecting one class of our population, we denied to them every natural right and sought to extinguish their very humanity. Resistance was hopeless, but they protested silently by still wearing the form of man, of which we could not deprive them. Planting both feet upon the prostrate and helpless, men as much as we, we politely invited the world to contemplate the prosperity of the United States. Forests falling, factories humming, gold glittering in every man's pocket ! Above all, would the world please to take notice that it was a land of liberty, and that we offered a happy home to the oppressed of every clime? 'A wise and sensible man was John Rutledge of South Carolina', smiled the complacent country, smoothing its full pockets, 'morals have nothing to do with politics'. 'Good', mutters the ostrich, as he buries his head in the sand, 'now nobody sees me'."

"And suddenly, in a moment smitten by the avenging storm of fire, choking and struggling in the thick clouds and blood of war, for four years we have desperately wrestled for life, and kneeling among the dear and mangled bodies of our first-born and best-beloved, we have acknowledged that even Yankees cannot shake the throne of God, that he has created men with equal rights, and that morals and politics, which his right hand has joined together, not the shrewdest head nor the basest heart, nor the most prosperous nation nor the most insolent and popular party, nor sneers nor falsehoods, nor mean men nor wicked laws can put asunder. Ah, fathers, mothers, lovers, whose darlings come no more, you whose sad voices ask, 'What have we gained ? what have we gained?' how can your aching hearts believe it, but this war of four years, so full of doubt and anguish, was infinitely nobler and more glorious than the thirty years of peace before it. Four years more of such peace would have slain the very soul of the nation ; and because the country was still strong enough to tear off that fair and fatal robe of compromise, because she bared her bosom and bravely endured the sharp torture of the knife, to-day the cancer is cut away, and she stands erect, though bleeding, and thanks God for health renewed."

"This, then, is the gain of the Good Fight in this war, first, that the nation has attained a living consciousness of its inevitable unity, second, that it has proved its enormous power, and third, that in the terrible struggle it has used that united power for, and not against, equal rights. And the spirit of caste which it has disabled it will now utterly destroy. For the Good Fight is not a crusade against a section or a State, but against caste everywhere in the country. This is now entrenched in the bitter prejudice against the colored race, which is as inhuman and unmanly as the old hatred and contempt of Christendom for the Jews. Lifting their heads from bloody defeat in the field, the wan and wasted States of the South say in terms caste must be maintained, and by every kind of vagrant law and hostile legislation they will try to maintain it."

"But when we freed the slaves we did not say to them, 'Caste shall not grind you with the right hand, but it shall with the left'. We said, 'Caste shall not grind you at all, and you shall have the same guarantees of freedom that we have'. President Johnson defines the liberty springing from the Emancipation amendment as the right to labor and enjoy the fruit of labor to its fullest extent. It is easy to quarrel with this as with every definition. But it is good enough, and it is as true of Connecticut as of Missouri that no man fully enjoys the fruit of his labor who does not have an equality of right before the law and a voice in making the law. That is the final security of the commonwealth, and we are bound to help every citizen attain it, whether it be the foreigner who comes ignorant and wretched to our shores or the native whom a cruel prejudice opposes. Do you tell me that we have nothing to do with the State laws of Alabama? I answer that the people of the United States are the sole and final judges of the measures necessary to the full enjoyment of the freedom which they have anywhere bestowed. If we choose, we may trust a certain class in the unorganized States to secure this liberty, just as we might have chosen to trust Mister Vallandigham, Mister Horatio Seymour, and Mister Fernando Wood to carry on the war. But as we wanted honor and not dishonor, as we wanted victory and not surrender, we chose to trust it to Farragut and Sherman, to Sheridan and Grant. If you don't want a thing done, says the old proverb, send; if you do, go yourself. When Grant started. Uncle Sam went himself. So, if we don't care whether we keep our word to those whom we have freed, we may send, by leaving them to the tender mercies of those who despise and distrust them. But if we do care for our own honor and the national welfare, we shall go ourselves, and through a national bureau and voluntary associations of education and aid, or in some better way if it can be devised, keep fast hold of the hands of those whom the President calls our wards, and not relinquish those hands until we leave in them every guarantee of freedom that we ourselves enjoy."

"Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word."

"But the spirit of caste, if naturally more malignant in a region where personal slavery has been abolished against the will of the dominant class, is not confined to it. We are apt to draw the line geographically, but it will not run so. They may be sad goats on the other side of the line, but we sheep may find an occasional speck in our virtuous wool. 'Caste must be maintained', say the governors and legislatures of Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama and North and South Carolina and Georgia.' 'Amen', says Connecticut, 'that is a political wooden nutmeg for this market'. 'Amen', says New York, which prefers to pour political power into a foreign white whiskey-skin rather than into a native sound and serviceable vessel of a darker hue. 'Amen', says Indiana, which asks her colored children to fight and die for her upon the battle-field, and refuses by her laws to permit the survivors to return to their homes. 'Amen', say Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and West Virginia, which forbid an entire class of their citizens to vote upon equal qualifications with others. And why? Because the party of hostility to human rights, which is 'conservative' in this growing, aspiring, expanding country, exactly as sheet-iron swaddling-clothes are conservative of a new-born babe, pursued by the pitiless logic of the sublime American principle and driven from one absurdity to another, now claims that ours is 'a white man's government'. Oh, no! Gentlemen, you may wish to make it so, but it was not made so. The false history of Judge Taney was promptly corrected from Judge Taney's bench by Justice Curtis."

"Government of the United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man's government to an exclusively rich white man's government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice. If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle."

"A white man's government? Not a government of intelligence, of justice, of virtue? Not a government by the consent of the governed, but a government of complexion? Where reason is skin deep? Who is a white man? Is a Spaniard? Is a Creole? Is an octoroon? Ohio says that a blood mixture of half-and-half will do for her. But if you have a qualification for the enjoyment of equal rights which vast numbers of our population cannot by nature satisfy, it is as if you made it depend upon a man's height or the color of his hair. You ask us to prefer a system of accidents to one of principles. You ask us to agree that a worthless, idle, drunken rascal, whose face might possibly be white if it could ever be washed clean enough, may be more safely trusted with political power, than an honest, intelligent, sober, industrious colored citizen."

"A white man's government? Well, I am a white man, I believe. Will anybody undertake to teach me what are the antipathies and loathings of white men? What mean whites may or may not like is of small importance. But the generous soul of my race, which has led the van in the great march of liberty and civilization, and whose lofty path is marked by the broken chains of every form of slavery, has an instinctive hatred of injustice, of exclusive privilege, of arrogance, ignorance, and baseness, and an instinctive love of honor, magnanimity and justice. The white soul of my race naturally loves the man, of whatever race or color, who bravely fights and gloriously dies for equal rights, and instinctively loathes every man who, saved by the blood of such heroes, deems himself made of choicer clay. The spirit of caste asks us to believe the outraged race inferior. Inferior? Inferior in what? In sagacity? In fidelity? In nobility of soul? In the prime qualities of manhood? And who are asked to believe this? We? We, hot, panting, exhausted from a fight for our national life in a part of the country where every white face was probably that of an enemy, and every colored face was surely that of a friend. We are asked to say it, whose brothers and sons, escaping from horrible pens of torture and death hundreds of miles from our lines, made their way through swamps and forests, safe from hungry bloodhounds and fiercer men, back to our homes and hearts, only because the men whom in our triumphant fortune we are asked to betray, in our darkest hour of misfortune risked their lives to save ours."

"Inferior race? Was it they who carved the skulls of our boys into drinking-cups and their bones into trinkets? Was it they who starved and froze our brothers into idiocy and madness at Andersonville and Belle-Isle? Was it they who hunted our darlings with bloodhounds, or hung faithful Union men before the very eyes of their wives and children? Come! Come! Brothers of my race, whether at the north or south, these things which we all execrate and abhor were the work of men of our own color. Let us clasp hands in speechless shame, and confess that manhood in America is to be measured not by the color of the skin, but by the quality of the soul."

"I know how subtle, elusive, apparently ineradicable, is the spirit of caste. But I remember that the English lords six centuries ago tore out the teeth of the Jew Isaac of York in the dungeon under the castle; and today he lives proudly in the castle, and the same lords come respectfully to his daughter's marriage, while the most brilliant Tory in the British Parliament proposes her health, and the Lord Chief Justice of England leads the hip-hip-hurrah at the wedding breakfast. Caste is very strong, but I remember that five years ago there were good men among us who said. If white hands can't win this fight let it be lost. I have seen the same men agreeing that black hands had even more at stake in it than we, giving them muskets, bidding them Godspeed in the Good Fight, and welcoming them with honor as they returned. Caste is very strong, but I remember that six years ago there was a Tennessee slave-holder, born in North Carolina, who had always acted with the slave interest, and was then earnestly endeavoring to elect John C. Breckenridge President of the United States. We have all seen that same man four years afterwards, while Tennessee quivered with civil war, standing beneath the autumn stars and saying, 'Colored men of Tennessee, humble and unworthy as I am, if no better shall be found I will indeed be your Moses and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace. I speak now as one who feels the world his country and all who love equal rights his friends'. So said Andrew Johnson, God and his country listening. God and his country watching, Andrew Johnson will keep his word."

"Yes, yes, caste is a glacier, cold, towering, apparently as eternal as the sea itself. But at last that glittering mountain of ice touches the edge of the Gulf Stream. Down come pinnacle and peak, frosty spire and shining cliff. Like a living monster of shifting hues, a huge chameleon of the sea, the vast mass silently rolls and plunges and shrinks, and at last utterly disappears in that inexorable warmth of water. So with us the glacier has touched the Gulf Stream. On Palm Sunday, at Appomattox Court House, the spirit of feudalism, of aristocracy, of injustice in this country, surrendered, in the person of Robert E. Lee, the Virginian slave-holder, to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of equal rights, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois tanner. So closed this great campaign in the 'Good Fight of Liberty'. So the Army of the Potomac, often baffled, struck an immortal blow, and gave the right hand of heroic fellowship to their brethren of the West. So the silent captain, when all his lieutenants had secured their separate fame, put on the crown of victory and ended civil war. As fought the Lieutenant-General of the United States, so fight the United States themselves, in the 'Good Fight of Man'. With Grant's tenacity, his patience, his promptness, his tranquil faith, let us assault the new front of the old enemy. We, too, must push through the enemy's Wilderness, holding every point we gain. We, too, must charge at daybreak upon his Spottsylvania Heights. We, too, must flank his angry lines and push them steadily back. We, too, must fling ourselves against the baffling flames of Cold Harbor. We, too, outwitting him by night, must throw our whole force across swamp and river, and stand entrenched before his capital. And we, too, at last, on some soft, auspicious day of spring, loosening all our shining lines, and bursting with wild battle music and universal shout of victory over the last desperate defense, must occupy the very citadel of caste, force the old enemy to final and unconditional surrender, and bring Boston and Charleston to sing Te Deum together for the triumphant equal rights of man."

"Never fear, true hearts! A people which has shown the quality of its genius as this nation has in the last four years will finish its work. It will go forward and not backward. For our America shall be the Sinai of the nations, and from the terrible thunders and lightnings of its great struggle shall proceed the divine law of liberty that shall subdue and harmonize the world."

"Congress incorporated birthright citizenship and legal equality into the Constitution via the Fourteenth Amendment. In recent decades, the courts have used this amendment to expand the legal rights of numerous groups, most recently, gay men and women. As the Republican editor George William Curtis wrote, the Fourteenth Amendment changed a Constitution 'for white men' to one 'for mankind'. It also marked a significant change in the federal balance of power, empowering the national government to protect the rights of citizens against violations by the states. In 1867 Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, again over Johnson’s veto. These set in motion the establishment of new governments in the South, empowered Southern black men to vote and temporarily barred several thousand leading Confederates from the ballot. Soon after, the 15th Amendment extended black male suffrage to the entire nation. The Reconstruction Acts inaugurated the period of Radical Reconstruction, when a politically mobilized black community, with its white allies, brought the Republican Party to power throughout the South. For the first time, African-Americans voted in large numbers and held public office at every level of government. It was a remarkable, unprecedented effort to build an interracial democracy on the ashes of slavery. Most offices remained in the hands of white Republicans. But the advent of African-Americans in positions of political power aroused bitter hostility from Reconstruction's opponents."

"Early in his career, he clerked for a New York City merchant and worked a farm. The young intellectual was a member of a study club along with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Amos Alcott. After four years traveling in Europe and the Middle East, Curtis joined the editorial staff of the New York Tribune. Harper's Weekly later made him its chief editorial writer. He married the sister of Robert Gould Shaw, who would command the 54th Massachusetts. His entry into politics was making campaign speeches for Republican presidential nominee John Fremont... Curtis was delegate to the GOP's 1860, 1864 and 1876 national conventions. He declined a diplomatic post in Egypt. During the year of President Lincoln's re-election he lost an election for the U.S. House of Representatives in a very Democrat district. In 1868, he cast an electoral vote for Ulysses Grant, who named him to a commission on civil service reform. President Rutherford Hayes offered him a choice of any ambassadorship, but the busy writer preferred to remain at home... In his final years, he served as regent and then vice chancellor of New York University."

"I am a sensitive artist. Nobody understands me because I am so deep. In my work, I make allusions to books that nobody else has read, music that nobody else has heard, and art that nobody else has seen. I can't help it, because I am so much more intelligent and well-rounded than everyone who surrounds me."

"I was a teenage wuss. In junior high school, I had oily, stringy hair and lots of pimples. I wore really wussy clothes. Most of the kids called me a faggot. Even some of the other wusses called me a faggot. There was maybe five kids in the whole school who were wussier than I was. I was really wussed out. I was afraid of girls, and guys scared the shit out of me."

"Whenever the circus would come to town, I would tell Ethan all kinds of kinky clown domination stories involving the leather clown, like the time she forced me to have sex with her in the little car, or the time she kept spraying me with the seltzer bottle until I obeyed her every command. Ethan and I would laugh and laugh at these tall tales, but I could tell deep down, he was wondering whether the leather clown was really real or not. And I would let him wonder."

"Gary and Melissa loved to make love, loved to make love, loved to make love to each other over and over and over again. For the first few weeks of their relationship, they made love four or five times a night. They were really turned on for a while. Then, to heighten their passion, they bought sex books: The Joy of Sex, The Sensuous Couple, The Joy of Sex Part Two, The Kama Sutra, Even Yet Still More Joy of Sex, Popular Mechanics, Betty Crocker, anything."

"Jesus was way cool. He told people to eat his body and drink his blood. That's so cool. Jesus was so cool. But then some people got jealous of how cool he was, so they killed him. But then he rose from the dead! He rose from the dead, danced around, and went up to heaven. I mean, that's so cool. Jesus was way cool. No wonder there are so many Christians."

"If most of us were wind up-toys, could we trust the few of us that weren't to wind us up when necessary? I think not. We would be a separate oppressed minority. Even if we were in the majority, it would still be that way. The ones that weren't wind-up toys would have the upper hand, and we would have to look out for each other, because they wouldn't."

"My heart is a flower, budding, blooming, dripping dew, dropping petals all over the place, making a big hopeless mess, stinking things up, waiting for someone to come flying over and suck the pollen out of me. Suck me dry. 'Til I wilt. 'Til I am nothing. 'Til next spring."

"I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like. I want to be just like all the different people. I have no further interest in being the same, because I have seen difference all around, and now I know that that's what I want. I don't want to blend in and be indistinguishable. I want to be part of the different crowd, and assert my individuality along with others who are different like me."

"I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and my penis was missing again. This happens all the time; it's detachable."

"People sometimes tell me I should get it permanently attached, but I don't know. Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass, I like having a detachable penis."

"Ed walked away from the program feeling fortified and stapled. His brain was buzzing, the way it always did just after Jeopardy! He loaded up the microbus with Atlases and poseidons and headed for Pope County. "I've had it," he sang. "I've had it with puns, alliteration, Russian literature, Italian neorealism, meaningless cross-references, and laundry lists of nonsense. I shall drive without a license, without clothing, without direction, and if I make it to Arkansas, fine, and if I'm running late, if I'm running a numbers game, it doesn't matter, I shall keep on running. Yes, this is the answer. This is the ending. I shall keep on running, because a body in motion tends to stay emotional, and it's better to feel. Pain is better than emptiness, emptiness is better than nothing, and nothing is better than this.""

"In a way, I suppose you could say my experience is quite limited. For example, I never locked Oliver Cromwell in a broom closet while singing "Waltzing Matilda." I never sawed a television in half, although I once saw Wendy O. Williams saw a guitar. I never played a decent game of jacks. I never played poker with a toothless one-eyed pirate who kept picking his teeth with a Bowie knife to distract me, while his parrot looked over my shoulder and told him what cards I had by using an elaborate code involving vomiting, chirping, and sea chanteys."

"...I wanna know about the commercial I saw on TV: An Irish guy walking through a field of green, whistling one of those Irish jigs, and a woman walks up and says, "Manly, yes, but I like it too." Then the guy pulls out a huge knife and cuts off his first two fingers and somehow catches them in what's left of his left hand and hands them to the woman. Did I mention they're both dressed in green? They they both sing this song together: "Are ya icky? Are ya sticky? Are ya hot as anything? Hey! Cut off two of your fingers, and stab yourself in the eye!" Then he stabs himself in the eye and hands her the knife, and she stabs herself in the eye, okay? Okay? So what about that?"

"I think it's time we so-called "sensitive men" stopped kidding ourselves with all this crap about how guys in the Marines and garage mechanics and just generally, you know, macho guys—about how they're insecure about their masculinity because they have little dicks, because that's crap, and we know it. Guys in the military, construction workers, football players, they all have bigger dicks than you and I, and we might as well just accept it. Because it's stupid and dishonest for us to go around implying that us literary, intellectual, politically aware, feminist-type men are actually more confident than the insensitive, sexist, brute-type men because size doesn't matter, and even if it did, we have the bigger dicks, because this is bullshit. I think it's high time we all took a good hard look at our dicks and faced the music."

"You are responsible for all of your successes, and the lack thereof. And that is the essential point that failure, your ever-faithful friend, wants to make: that your failure could not exist without you—without your stupidity, without your lies, without your mistakes, your uselessness, your lack of faith, your ineptitude, your unjustifiable confidence in your alleged abilities, you stupid loser—failure is your only friend. Failure is your only lover. Failure is your only hope."

"See, look, uh, I—I know I'm homophobic, but not about gay guys. They don't bother me at all. It's straight guys who don't know they're gay. They fuck my shit right up. Like a guy calls me up and says, "A bunch of us guys are gonna sit around in our underwear and watch the football game and drink beer and eat chips and, you know, maybe wrestle with each other a little—you know, just us guys. You wanna come over?" And I'm like, "No.""

"[M]y father was a really great man. I'll never forget the last thing he ever said to me. Nor will I ever repeat it."

"A lot of people have said Giuliani did a great job with the crisis, and I—I don't know, and a lot of people are saying that Bush is doing a good job, and I really don't think so, but in all this discussion, no one has stepped forward to say what a truly remarkable job Jennifer Love Hewitt has been doing. She has shown unbelievable restraint during this entire crisis. I haven't heard her say a single irresponsible word. So many people have rushed to get on the television and say stupid, fucked-up, crazy shit, but not JLH."

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck the Congress for sucking your dick, and fuck everybody who puts up with it—including me. Fuck me for not killing you. Fuck everybody who's come within fifteen fucking feet of you and hasn't fucking tried. But fuck murder, fuck rotting in jail, fuck you and fuck you and fuck—you don't even deserve to be executed. Just die a slow fucking painful fucking death, you illiterate shit scumbag scumbag motherfucking shit-eating scumbag scumbag. You fucking, you fuck, fuck, fuck you."

"I've done bad things with relish, and good things with pickles."

"I'm a vegetarian now, but I'm willing to make an exception in the event I'm presented with people. Because I've always been fairly standoffish; I have this tendency not to get to know people very well. And I don't think there is any better way to get to know humanity than to ingest it."

"Look. I'd be the first to admit that I don't have an ounce of common sense, but I think people should be fucking in the streets. Assfucking. Especially women fucking men in the ass with dildos. What this country needs is a lot more sodomy. Because there are a lot of crises a-coming: global warming as we rape Alaska for oil, the return of coathanger abortions, downward economic spirals, nuclear terrorism, the reemergence of "Burn the motherfucker down," "Fuck the police," "Blow it all up and let's start all over again"—it will be a dark and frightening time. And our retarded president will offer little solace or hope. If you think things cannot get any worse, you have no imagination and no sense of history."

"I'm talking about a spiritual sexual revolution, and I don't care if you're a heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, monogamous, polygamous, polymorphously perverse, fetishistic, submissive, dominant, watersports, madonna-or-whore, old, fat, ugly, handicapped, repressed, frightened, ashamed, or even a proud white American jerkoff fuckface who irresponsibly and thoughtlessly makes matters worse by talking stupid shit and voting like shit-for-brains: We must fuck our way out of this. All of us. We are responsible for our recovery, for our salvation. We must fuck our way out of this."

"There's all this possibility out there, and it's gotta make you wonder, what's wrong with you? That time that God spoke to you and showed you the way, clear as day, and you were like "No way; too much work; I'm busy; I'm too tired; I don't even believe in you anyway; what's in it for me?" Well, you fucked up, didn't you? You sell your soul to the devil, you get like four dollars, but if you had come when God called, you would have gotten whatever you want—a nose job, a fifty-inch TV set, a waterbed filled with Calista Flockhart's urine, whatever you want. But you said no to God, and now you'll never get to go out with Christina Ricci. You'll never get a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car that can float and fly. You'll never get to visit Mars, or the future, or Marrakesh."

"William Rehnquist—I hope you die a slow and painful death. Sandra Day O'Connor—die a slow and painful death. Clarence Thomas—I hope you die slowly and painfully. Antonin Scalia—die with pain, slowly. Justice Kennedy—I forget your first name—I hope your death is painful and slow. President Bush—I hope you die so slowly, and with pain. Dick Cheney—die painfully slow, with slow pain. John Ashcroft—die slowly, painfully. You are all criminals. You will never go to jail. So just die, as soon as possible, with great pain, slowly. I would die the slowest, most painful death of all of you if it meant that just half of you would die now. Call me liberal, call me twisted and sick, I don't care. I hate you all and I hope you all die."

"You know what's a good food? Avocados. They fucking rule. Fucking avocados. I'm so there if it's gonna be avocados, I'm there. If I can have that with avocado, I'm gonna order it with avocado. That's my way. I'm like, yes to avocado. Yes. Yes, yes."

"When my mind is operating at its peak, it should depress me to think that this is the best I can do, because it's not very good at all. When my mind is operating normally, I should be even more depressed."

"Today, I should think of something about myself that really annoys me, and I should try to change it. Then, when I fail to change it, I can be annoyed by that as well. Then, I can be annoyed about how easily I get annoyed. Then I can get angry."

"Perhaps I will achieve a small success today. If so, I must not be taken in. I am not on a roll, I am not in the zone. It was an accident, a happenstance. Such things are bound to happen sometimes. The false feeling of confidence will soon pass."

"It may seem sometimes that the whole world is against me and the reason I have failed in life is because of fate—that I was destined to fail, and there was nothing I could have done. But that's not true. There was plenty I could have done. Why didn't I do something?"

"Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, "If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been." Then I will remind myself that I cannot."

"The fact that many people overindulge, and lose themselves in excess, and make fools of themselves and act like idiots, is no reason for me to do these things. The reason for me to do these things is that I, too, am an idiot."

"Tonight, I should watch the sun set, and think of the impending darkness as a metaphor for my wasted life: once it was bright, and full of potential, and now it is dark and hopeless and bleak. I should not make the mistake of thinking that the moon and the stars represent slim glimmers of hope, or evidence that there is light on the other side. Even if there is light somewhere I will never walk in it again."

"Today, for five minutes, I will sit quietly and meditate and think pleasant thoughts and I will recite gentle positive messages to myself. Oh yeah, that really sounds like me. I'm sure I'm going to do that. Right."

"I am not well suited to the tasks that are set before me today. Most of what I must do is either insulting to my intelligence, or far beyond my capabilities. This explains why I am so frustrated and full of rage most of the time."

"Today, life will offer me many lessons. I will learn nothing."

"Today, it may seem as if there are demons attacking me from within. I should remember that demons are illusory, and that when I think that I'm being attacked by unseen forces, it probably just means that I am going insane."

"It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn't any solution to this."

"There will always be people who have power over me, who can destroy my spirit and drain my soul. My best defense is to behave as if I have no soul, to act as if my spirit has already been crushed. Perhaps then, I will be left alone or ignored."

"The task that lies before me is daunting and the rewards are uncertain. I should probably let someone else do it."

"I have tried very hard to find meaning in what I do, but I have found instead a vast and limitless nothingness. I tried to embrace the nothingness, but it slipped through my grasp, and now there is nothing where the nothingness was. This may sound meaningful, but it isn't."

"If I work hard and am rewarded, then I haven't really gained anything. It has been a trade: I've put in, and I've gotten back. Only if I am rewarded without having done anything have I actually come out ahead. The best way to gain the most is to do nothing."

"A tree does not try to be a koala bear. A dog does not try to be a bird. A stone does not pretend it is alive. Why should I pretend I am intelligent, or good-looking, or successful?"

"Life is so much easier today than it was a hundred years ago. People used to have to work on farms from sun-up to sun-down, and still their children would die, and there often wouldn't be enough to eat. I wouldn't have lasted three days under such conditions. I have no right to be alive."

"Many people talk as if they have all the answers, whereas I know I don't. That's probably why no one listens to me."

"It's not just that I'm stupid; it's that I'm just smart enough to know how stupid I am. I wish I weren't so stupid. Or that I were stupider."

"When I am tired, it is easy to believe that my exhaustion is the reason I am depressed and lonely and uninspired. But when I am well-rested [sic], I can realize that these negative feelings are not a result of too little sleep. They are a result of my being a miserable, hopeless, misanthropic wretch."

"I can read books and news articles about people who have excelled, people who have done extremely well in their chosen field, or made a lot of money, or married well, or what have you. When some people read this stuff, they get inspired, but when I read it, it makes me feel worse. Sometimes I wish I had never learned to read."

"There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all."

"Why don't I have enough money? The answer is obvious. Money is how people are measured. What you are worth is what you are worth. The reason I am not worth very much is because I am not worth very much. Nothing could be simpler."

"It is better to curse the darkness than to light a candle, because, first of all, how much light is one candle going to shed anyway? And secondly, what is there to see that is so important? Whereas cursing is always satisfying. The next time I find myself in the dark, I will curse heartily."

"It is extremely unlikely that I will ever be one of the richest people in the world. Almost all rich people were born rich, and almost all of them marry other rich people, and almost all of them hold onto almost all of their money, to pass on to their kids. Money doesn't appear out of nowhere—the more they have, the less for me. Life is a "zero sum game," and I am the zero."

"When I'm feeling proud of myself, I should remember to ask myself why I think I am of any value at all. I have done nothing that a hundred thousand other people couldn't do, and most of them would probably do it better, and they probably wouldn't feel so self-important about it. I should always be ashamed of myself."

"When I accept another person's imperfections, I deprive myself of any opportunity to be right. Today, I should look out for people who might challenge or annoy me. They are wrong, and I am right. The more I attack others, the more important I will become."

"I am so far away from being the person I want to be. I am a terrible person and I am overwhelmed with guilt. I am paralyzed with shame and fear. If I work hard at improving myself each day, I may get a little tiny bit better, but I won't get much better—I'll never be great. It's too late for me. I've really blown it."

"If I take things slowly today in order to appreciate life better, and if I take time to listen to the messages that life sends me, then I will have less time to do the things I need to do today. Then tomorrow I will have to do everything that much faster and I will be that much more unable to appreciate life. It is dangerous to stop and smell the roses."

"I am not successful and I probably never will be. I look around and I see successful people, and I see that they have something I don't—success. Perhaps they were born that way, or perhaps they figured something out that I can never seem to learn. I don't know. That's why I'm not successful."

"I can't make people change, and I can't change myself. I can't change the political climate, or fix the myriad problems of the world, or make anyone else happy. When I think about these things, I feel impotent and sad. When I don't think about them, I am running away from the truth. Either way I lose."

"Sometimes I feel I do know what to believe in. Sometimes I believe in working, writing, performing, doing the work. Other times I'm full of despair and I don't even believe in that, but for some reason I will get out of bed and do something anyway, even though I don't believe in it."

"Sometimes if you go to see a very, very, happy movie, a Hollywood movie, you can walk out of the movie and feel very depressed because it's so false. And other times you see a very depressing movie and it makes you feel good, happy because you've seen something real. You've seen something that talks to you and says that your bad feelings are legitimate. And then you can go further with that and say, "Well, this bad feeling is good, and this good feeling is bad, but is it good to feel bad and is it bad to feel good?" I'm concerned with feelings. And sometimes when I feel good, I'll write something very negative because I have the strength to do it. But when I really, really feel very bad, what I want to do is make myself feel better, so I'll write something happier."

"...I don't like to make judgments about what people like sexually. Some people like one sex, or the other, or they like fat people, or they like to be tied up, whatever. That's fine. Whatever people like is fine by me. I think that's important, too, because in this country a lot of people want to make laws about that and I'm very much against that. Making certain kinds of sex illegal... To me that's immoral, to illegalize things that people want to do. Same with religious things. I think people should be able to believe whatever they want to believe. I think that when governments try to get involved with that sort of stuff, you're really destroying people's souls. I don't make statements like that in my songs because that's not what I want. I don't want to make a political statement."

"I think it is considered bad to be clever, because I think people usually assume that a clever person or a clever band doesn't have substance, doesn't really care about anything. People want music that matters, that believes in something, I think, whether it expresses anger or despair or love. People want to believe that their artists are portraying emotions that they really feel. And I think that's true of Patsy Cline, Johnny Rotten, whoever you want to name. If you believe the artist, you're going to go for it."

"Some of the [band's] work has a genuine feeling behind it. Some of it is probably just being funny for the sake of being funny. Obviously, there are elements to "Detachable [Penis]" about male identity that are there, but not really overtly there. For the person who wants to find it, it's there. I don't know. I don't think... I like to think I'm not obvious about the humor, and I'm not obvious about the feelings, either. There's a certain degree of subtlety to what I'm doing; even in very obvious things, there's something underneath that's interesting. I think [the band is] guilty of being clever at times, to the detriment of conveying something more important, more real, more honest. I'll cop to that. But I will also say that there's also stuff that does have meaning."

"When the [Mystical Shit] CD first started to take shape, I was very unsure about what was happening—I wasn't sure I liked what these guys were coming up with. I missed Dogbowl's melodies, and I didn't like that it was loud. But other people seemed to like it a lot, and at that time, that was important to me, so I went with it. As time went by, I started to appreciate the oddity of me in a rock band. Unfortunately, I didn't really embrace the idea fully until that band had broken up. Nowadays, I can look back and think it was fun and funny that I was in a rock band, but at the time, it bothered me a lot and I complained about it all the time, but I lacked the moral character to do anything about it."

"Of all the stuff I write, probably 75% never gets recorded. Sometimes it's because I've read it at shows a few times to lukewarm response. But usually it's because I think it's not right. I will sometimes rewrite the same idea a few times before it feels good. I do this as opposed to taking a piece and tinkering with it in an effort to make it right. The earlier drafts wouldn't (and shouldn't) get recorded, because they're not as good."

"I think these are some of the common themes [of my work]: a) life is hard, brutal, capricious and unfair, b) sometimes there is a benefit to seeing it clearly, and acknowledging it truthfully..., and c) other times it is best to find something to laugh about, lest despair crush one completely. I find a lot of humor in shocking or so-called taboo things: castration, excrement, violence (usually self-inflicted or inflicted on the narrator, "[Martin] Scorsese" being an exception), sex and sexual perversions... etc."

"No record of her high descent There needs, nor memory of her name; Enough that Raphael’s colors blent To give her features deathless fame."

"Really and truly—I’ve nothing to wear."

"Anyone who dismisses out of hand evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies still do some of the things that they now brag about having done not too long ago is not a skeptic, but a fool."

"Being an atheist is like not owning a TV – completely rational, but best kept to one's self."

"The less said about my extended family back in ranch country the better, as I don't want the ATF burning them alive."

"I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine."

"I am a tremendous optimist for someone who has grown up amid the twilight of American competence."

"The truth is that I am a sentient computer program and I fully intend to burn your cities to the ground."

"The main point seems to be that I'm arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people."

"I would love to debate any politician in any western state on the question of whether the rule of law ought to be respected in a world where even the most "respectable" governments establish intelligence agencies that routinely violate those laws at taxpayer expense and at no real penalty to anyone involved."

"We're in a state of conflict with the Government. Either we are going to jail or we're going to win."

"What an age of innocence it was, the Watergate era... way back in the halcyon days when the US could be contrasted with totalitarian regimes on matters of surveillance."

"In conclusion, they should let me out of jail."

"Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession."

"This is not the “rule of law”...it is the “rule of law enforcement.”"

"When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves."

"I've never had any other loving heartfelt desire. From the minute I heard music I knew why I was born. To make music to play to listen to music, and for some reason I have been lucky enough to llive this beautiful life as a musicisan. I don't know. I love all things "nature". I'm an animal lover, but I don't have the smarts to be a vet, or the heart to have been a vet cause I cry over any wounded animal. … I might have been maybe a zoo keeper helping feed the animals. Feeding or petting the big cats or whatever. I don't know what else I would have done, because I love music too much. For anyone who has that calling and is trying also to make a living at it, it is really hard. Getting gigs and getting listened to. Getting respect, it's hard. Its what bonds us all because we have been so rejected and dejected. Yet we know in our hearts why we are here."

"From a distance, there is harmony And it echoes through the land It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace It's the voice of every man."

"From a distance we are instruments Marching in a common band Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace They're the songs of every man."

"From a distance you look like my friend Even though we are at war From a distance I just cannot comprehend What all this war is for."

"From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves It's the heart of every man (Every man). It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves This is the song of every man."

"There are plenty of people who won’t tune in because a woman’s voice bothers their eardrums. Their ear canals can’t handle the sound of my shrill voice talking at them about a subject. I guess I just don’t really care about those people."

"There’s a lot of people sitting around in rooms discussing how to make it happen as opposed to just, like, doing it — asking: ‘Do you have any 45-year-old-woman friends who you think are really talented who could submit an application to us?’ ‘Do you have any black friends who are great writers who haven’t had a shot."

"Look, if you like the freedom to play violent video games, watch internet porn, and grow weed in your house without police using thermal energy to bust you, you owe a debt to Antonin Scalia. You also probably work on my staff. Whether you loved or hated his narrow literalism about a document written before machine guns and gay people were invented, Scalia was by all accounts a nice guy with a wicked sense of humor. People liked him. … Good people do have bad ideas."

"I'm sorry, remind me again, what is the point of encouraging little girls to dream big if any career puts them in the path of boob honkers? There's not a workplace on land or sea or even at the bottom of a big, deep hole in the ground where we're actually keeping women safe. Right now I'm actually picturing some guy saying, oh, what am I supposed to do, stop asking women out at work because it makes them uncomfortable? Yes."

"Oh my God, conservatives, make up your minds about poor babies. We thought you wanted them to be born. Why else would you oppose free contraception, wage jihad against Planned Parenthood, fight the FDA on Plan B, and make abortion as unattainable for poor women as a ticket to Hamilton. Well, like it or not, there are a lot of poor babies, and it seems all you got for them is the same useless advice you’re giving their mothers: Keep your legs crossed."

"As long as you want to keep playing whack-a-mole from hell, it is my solemn promise that I will keep picking up the metaphorical hammer to slam you back down and remind you that you have not yet done anything to earn our forgiveness. So take your millions of dollars and pay a therapist to care about how tough it’s been to get caught being an abuser because honestly, I don’t give a shit."

"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog ."

"im little jesica. im dying because of obamas help care bill. im on my death bed and the doctor is ignoring me because my dady works hard"

"Welcome to the citadel of eternal wisdom. Behold, this crystal contains the sum of all human knowledge -- Except Rap And Country"

"icant come to work today.. on account of JERRY DUTY *SHoves every seinfeld disk into dvd player at once*"

"'im not owned! im not owned!!', i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob"

"fuck "jokes". everything i tweet is real. raw insight without the horse shit. no, i will NOT follow trolls. twitter dot com. i live for this"

""Is Wario A Libertarian" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,"

"see this watch? i got it by Crying. my car? crying. my beautiful wife? Crying. My perfect teeth? Crying. now get the fuck out of my office"

"another day volunteering at the betsy ross museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it"

"how come a baby born with a foot in its brain is considered a "Miracle Baby" but when I get my dick stuck in a drawer im just some asshole"

""jail isnt real," i assure myself as i close my eyes and ram the hallmark gift shop with my shitty bronco"

"THE COP GROWLS "TAKE OFF TH OSE JEANS, CITIZEN." I COMPLY, REVEALING THE FULL LENGTH DENIM TATTOOS ON BOTH LEGS. THE COP SCREAMS; DEFEATED"

"the doctor reveals my blood pressure is 420 over 69. i hoot & holler outta the building while a bunch of losers try to tell me that im dying"

"strongest blade in the world, however, it is so fragile as to shatter when handled by any force other than the delicate touch of a lesbian ."

"IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL"

"who the fuck is scraeming 'LOG OFF' at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off"

"oh nothin, i was just buying some ear medication for my sick uncle... *LOWERS SHADES TO LOOK YOU DEAD IN THE EYE* who's a Model by the way,"

""This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit"

"my disrespectful teen son somehow got hold of a gluten product and now he wants to become a cat girl"

"here's a list of touhou girls i want to have as a Mom someday & here is a copy of that list in case you accidentally throw it in the gabarge"

"Food $200 Data $150 Rent $800 Candles $3,600 Utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying"

"if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war"

"big bird was obviously just a man in a suit. but the other ones were too small to contain men. so what the fuck"

"its the weekend baby. youknow what that means. its time to drink precisely one beer and call 911"

"it is with a heavy heart that i must announce that the celebs are at it again"

"the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron""

"blocked. blocked. blocked. youre all blocked. none of you are free of sin"

"awfully bold of you to fly the Good Year blimp on a year that has been extremely bad thus far"

"[man leans into doorway of WTC bathroom] "Hey, you gotta finish up in there. 9/11 is happening." "Alright. Just a sec.""

"drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"

"THERAPIST: your problem is, that youre perfect, and everyone is jealous of your good posts, and that makes you rightfully upset. ME: I agree"

"joke's on you; i actually love being body slammed by one dozen perfect wrestlers. and my mouth isn't filled with bloodm, it's victory wine"

"the numa numa man just bougt a $70million house and im here at the library trying to photocopy a fruit roll up"

"koko the talking ape.. has been living high on the hog, wasting our tax dollars on high capacity diapers. No more. i will suplex that beast,"

"and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad."

"do not be afraid to talk to that lonely boy on the train ... with the rosy red cheeks, sun glasses & big cigar... he just mmight be... angel"

"ah, So u persecute just because he has different beliefs? Do Tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it"

"the jduge orders me to take off my anonymous v mask & im wearing the joker makeup underneath it. everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit"

"its fucked up how there are like 1000 christmas songs but only 1 song aboutr the boys being back in town"

"Politic's is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl)"

"donlad trump reportedly says that normal type pokemon are a waste of time. they're just dirty birds & rats who have no right being a pokemon"

"DOCTOR: you cant keep doing this to yourself. being The Last True Good Boy online will destroy you. you must stop posting with honor ME: No,"

"so long suckers! i rev up my motorcylce and create a huge cloud of smoke. when the cloud dissipates im lying completely dead on the pavement"

"user named " beavis_sinatra " has been terrorizing me since 2004, by sending me pictures of cups that are too close to the edge of the table"

"ME: there is a new type of beer called "Wine" shirtless guy witht 104 followers: Shut the fuck up ME: Yes sir"

"girls always love to telling people not to" Mansplain" but they do not care of, "Man's Pain""

"1st grade: Mastered. 2nd Grade: MAstered. 3rd Grade: Mastered. 4th Grade: Heres when they start trying to trick you 5th Grade:This ones hard"

"using the toilet when i hear Our national anthem start to play. i do what i must. i stand tall in complete agony; as shit runs down my leg,"

"im afraid you do not grasp the enormity of who it is you are dealing with. (removes diaper,. revealing two sub-diapers ) Shall we continue.."

"if you ask me this election could end about 100 different ways: 1) trump gets 0% of the vote 2) trump gets 1% of the vote 3) trump gets 2% o"

"i refuse to consume any product that has been created by, or is claimed to have been created by, the (((Keebler Elves)))"

"trying to heal..... please donate to my go fund me... $10 will make me less racist... $100 will make me extremely less racist...thank you..."

"the human mind... perhaps the most powerful weapon. second only to the "GUN""

"issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them""

"look, im not saying that martin luther king jr was a gamer. that would be ludicrous. im simply saying that if games had existed at the time,"

"reading a 900 page book on Dry Rubs and immediately forgetting all of it and just dumping a shit load of cocoa pebbles on my ribs"

"i lvoe and cherish all of the girls of this site, and other websites. you all become my wife more and more with each passing day. Thank you"

"people come up to me and say, "I will never use the bathroom. I will never shit" and i gotta tell them pal, sooner or later youre gonna shit"

"turning a big dial taht says "Racism" on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right"

"revealing the gender of my baby by eating a whole bunch of food dye and taking a huge pink shit in front of my relatives. ah!! its a girl !!"

"DUMBASS: SHut the fuck up THE WISE MAN: No you shut the fuck up"

"im stupider then dog shit, i dont give a shit, and i dont give a fuck, and i will never shut the fuck up, and i'll always Respect my enemys."

"my favorite feature of this site is absolutely no consequences for my opinions sucking ffucking ass and me being 100% wrong about everything"

"i often disagree with DigimonOtis, but his efforts to keep Sharia Law out of the donkey kong 64 wiki are much needed in this wolrd of danger"

"im afraid i must say that i do not find the mysteries featured on "scooby-doo" challenging enough ."

"getting pissed off at the idea of someone going on to wiki pedia and changing the name of the japanese suicide forest to "Warios Woods""

"i hate i t when girls think im proposing whenever i take the knee at them in protest"

"VERIFY!! VERIFIY THIS ACCOUNT! THE TROLLS ARE BREAKING IN THROUGH THE WINDOWS!! I NEED THE CHECK MARK !! NOW!! NOW!! NOW!!"

"my friend the only crypto currency you wanna get your hands on is this: bird seed. There is a lot of birds and they all gotta eat"

"love when i lose aobut 100 followers immediately after making a beautiful post. the weak shriveling up into dust. Thats called darwin"

"i regret to inform you, that by resorting to Swear language, you have forfeit this debate. Farewell my bitch"

"i just need to say, to anyone reading this.. You are Important, You are loved, and You belong in this world, if you have over 5000 followers"

"go ahead. keep screaming "Shut The Fuck Up " at me. it only makes my opinions Worse"

"the worst part of nationalism is having to pretend the flag is really good, like "yeah the country looks exactly like that. they nailed it""

"i would take so many bribes if i was a judge. half my shit would be bribes. take bribes from the criminals until theyre too poor to do crime"

"a man asks God, how am i supposed to live, without George H.W. Bush God simply said "That is why I made 2 george bushs" The man just smiled."

"im not going to post about taking shits or shitting anymore . i Condemn all of my previous posts about shitting and asses"

"shitting on a Towel"

""The Godfather: Part Iraq" (2004) In this 4th installment of the Godfather series, the godfathers head to iraq to settle the score, of 9/11."

"just found out about Object Permanence... why didnt any one tell me about this shit"

"Im the only man here who injects himself with a CIA Grade Truth Serum before each and every post i make. Remember only that"

"i think it would be fucking stupid to be a fat ass caterpillar and have your entire body be made out of weak points"

"who cares. pick up a foot ball"

"the entire time youre watching the movie 101 Dalmatians, youre just thinking, This is so many more dalmations than usual. It is just fucked"

"theres a popular nursery rhyme in which the singer claims to be a teapot. this, for many children, is their first experience with "Trolling""

"playing the worlds most normal sized violin"

"Buffalo wild wing gets $0 tip for serving "Bones" to me in chicken, if i had wanted to eat bones i would take my Ass to the grave yard"

"the coolest thing the police ever did was invent their own flag thats just a desecrated version of the american flag"

"they are going to start calling the damn gas prices "Gasp prices" because thats what i do when i see then"

"i deserve th e most mentally ill president imaginable. 99 year old babbling doofus. Send us into the volcano sir"

"ive flattened the curve over 100 times. what have you pricks been doing"

"every generation deserves at least 5 movies named "Spider Man 2""

"guys who get off on being humiliated used to expose themselves at the grocery store or something. now they pretend to be journalists on here"

"if you ask me many of Americans have been wearing the mask even before from covid 19. the mask i refer to is of course the clown's mask."

"one thing the gamer world is certainly agreeing of, is that halo infinite is sure to be the highest numbered halo game yet"

"epic ; supreme court rules nabisco is legally allowed to label their products as "Homemade" after forcing the employees to live at the factory"

"i would rather go fuck my self than read one more post on the bird websitw"

"thinking about a "Cock Ring" for the neck that strangles all the blood into your brain and gives you what is essentially a mental erection"

"(hearing about a guy who died) wow thats like 0.0003 9/11s"

"should i learn Letters first? or choose the path of Numbers? a queston every baby must ask it self"

"everyone less mentally ill than me is Privileged, everyone more mentally ill than me is Toxic, everyone equally mentally ill to me is Cool"

"how about instead of drop the ball on new years we drop the damn gas prices for onve"

"for like 8 months i thought covid was one of those joke diseases where you ask "what's covid" and the other guy tells tou to suck his nuts"

"society is so much fucking Bitched ....."

"no heaven or hell when you die, everyone is just herded into a room with a big scoreboard saying which person blasted the most Cum"

"ive generated over 100,000 wordles in my head and completed them easily. what more can i say of it"

"marijuana did columbine"

"my biggest fear is that theres an earth quake while im jacking off and little pieces of cum start flyiyng into my mouth and all over my dog"

"you call this shit rotisserie chicken? I bet this shit hasnt even rotated 1 time in its entire life."

"(suddenly becoming very somber) no Woman should have to pay over $10 for a Brassiere."

"I am Donald "Penis" Trump, known & hated for my Inflammatory rhetoric, as well as my old mafia-style Racism. Looking forward to posting here"

"just clicking my mouse a bit. having a look at my files"

"i really dont care what Yankee Doodle did when he went to town. His toxic fanbase tells me everything I need to know about him ."

"Bad news folks! i waited in line for 16 hours to see the queen. But by the time i got there she was fuckin DEAD!!!!!!"

"now that elon has disposed of the left wing woke brigade I can finally post pictures of my COCK!!!"

"ripleys suck my dick or not"

"you just paid $8 to eat my ass stupid #BlockTheBlue"

"Having a bad one; First my Lockheed Martin investment tanks after the ceo posts his penis. Now Cold stone Creamery just called me the N-Word"

"HELP ELON!!ELON!! HELP! HELP! POST "DOG COIN""

"CHIEF: dracula is in our sights. Take the shot! SNIPER: I can't, Sir. I'm Woke! ME (watching through binoculars): He's woke! He wont do it!"

"if you drop a chicken cutlet on the floor it absorbs all kinds of dirt & particles that make it undesirable. Thats sort of how AI works"

"many claim to have seen me walking around the Las Vegas strip with a Device attached to my penis. This is untrue #NoDevice"

"is it true that if 3 adult men are jacking off in a bunk bed their hand movements will eventually Synchronize ?"

"" You know Gru been Fucking those minions " No , i don't know that. But thanks for showing your ignorance."

"born to be bull shit"

"the last time i stopped jacking off for 1 week I went insane and wrote the movie The God Father"

"my thoughts on the post "Georg Jetson Sucked Me" . First off you spelled his name wrong. Second off youre an idiot even thinking that"

"Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of "Hell" that I was banished to upon death in my previous life. In this abstract realm, the only thing I am certain of is that my cries are awarded "Favs" or "RTs" when they are particularly miserable or profane. These ethereal merits do nothing to ease my suffering, but I have deliriously convinced myself that gathering enough of them will impress my unseen superiors and grant me a promotion to a higher plane of existence. This is my sole motivation."

"it is absolutely a full time job, dealing with this Shit. i'm talking True full time, 24 hours. Listening to the perverts scream at me in the instant dm box while I'm trying to cobble together a coherent post. Standing on thje median strip at a busy intersection, next to the guy with a 20% off mattress sign, failing to shill copies of my Horrible book. Waking up screaming from Night terrors involving complete strangers accusing me of "Selling OUt." There is no clocking out. The clock is a part of me, it's always inside of me, and I'm fucked."

"My posts are the bible. My brain is the bible. The books I'm releasing are bibles. It's all bible, baby"

"You may have heard of a character from the batman movies, called the Joker. The joker just lives a normal life like you or me, going to the grocery store, and the office or what have you. But WHen the joker puts his mask on, he becomes the joker, and he mercilessly goes out there and gets Paid. Thats what I try to do in my life and the way I live life, and I do do it every day, and it is the essence of understanding my pain."

"I don't want to make photographs ... I want to make windows."

"I believe in the inherent power of language and letters and words. The world started with God saying something, because language is powerful."

"I don't have any odd rituals -- no candles to light, no offerings to the Muse. I simply write Monday through Friday for between 6 and 8 hours like any other working stiff."

"Myla Goldberg sets a steady hand upon her brow Myla Goldberg hangs a crooked foot all upside down It comes around it comes around It comes around it comes around Pretty hands do pretty things when pretty times arise Seraphim and seaweed swim where stick-limbed Myla lies"

"To me, in political terms, McConnell is actually far worse than the . The Grim Reaper only comes once in our lifetimes -- at the moment of death. In contrast, McConnell has been killing legislation for years. Add to that, McConnell has now gone beyond killing bills to helping embolden Donald Trump's worst instincts. [...] There's no way to stop the actual "Grim Reaper." But, with McConnell, there's one way to retire him. He is up for re-election in November 2020. And before you dismiss the notion that McConnell could lose, keep in mind that a recent poll from McConnell's home state of Kentucky shows him with about a 33% favorable rating, while over 50% hold an unfavorable view. The people of Kentucky may just have had their fill of McConnell, who appears to take joy in killing legislation that will help our nation. Kentucky voters could retaliate and act as the "Grim Reaper" -- bringing McConnell's political career to an end."

"Scientists are advancing a theory that human beings have stopped evolving because we've interfered with natural selection. Thousands of years ago, the fittest of the species endured, while the weakest stumbled into tar pits or got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. That doesn't happen much anymore, and consequently—these experts assert—humans are actually devolving, getting dumber and less fit. The hypothesis is bolstered by the popularity of daytime talk shows and psychic hotlines. More empirical evidence is supplied every Fourth of July, when alcohol and explosives are freely distributed among the populace."

"A Ph.D. in microbiology is not necessary to grasp the concept: Clean water is good. Poopy water is bad."

"Local newscasts aired the pollution warnings for days, and displayed detailed maps showing which areas were unsafe for swimming. By dawn's early light on July 4, it was reasonable to assume that almost everybody was aware of the problem, and had relocated their picnic plans to a safe beach. Out of fairness, though, let's say a few sheltered souls remained clueless. Perhaps they didn't have a TV or radio. Fair enough. You pile the family into the car and head across the Rickenbacker Causeway. You park along Hobie Beach, unload the coolers, smear on the sunscreen, dash for the water … and there it is. A sign. DANGER, it says, in English and Spanish. Don't swim here. The water's contaminated! Now comes the moment of truth. You can almost hear Darwin's ghost. Surely these morons aren't going swimming in THAT crap! Not with their kids! Not with a warning sign right in front of their face! Wrong, Charlie baby."

"Eons ago, when man lived in caves, dumb moves were often fatal moves. The quick and the smart survived, the slow and the dimwitted didn't. If one member of the tribe ate a berry and died, the others henceforth avoided those darn berries. Over time, humans advanced and grew sturdier. Not anymore. Now we've got seat belts, air bags, antibiotics and stomach pumps to save fools from their own mistakes. That's all right. Caring for others is one of the nobler traits of our species. The result, ironically, is that the genetic future of mankind isn't so rosy. Stragglers once culled from the herd now (in the absence of saber-toothed tigers) operate motor vehicles, watch Jerry Springer, cavort in pollution and even breed. Darwin would be truly worried. The evolutionary gap between the bacteria and us is closing."

"I try not to stand on a soapbox and scream. That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All my humor comes from anger. Satire is terrific therapy. Making people laugh is a joy, but making them think about something serious is the ultimate reward."

"I'm sort of fascinated by America's fascination with rednecks, the whole Duck Dynasty thing. Being a white guy from the South, I find it amazing that so many TV viewers are enchanted by beards, bad dentistry and moonshine accents. Also there’s this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions."

"Most opinion columnists start out as street reporters, an experience vital to understanding how things really work as opposed to how they should. My own approach to the column — drawn from the incomparable , and others — was simple: If what I wrote wasn’t pissing off somebody, I probably wasn’t doing my job. Take a sharp-edged stand on any issue, and the other side seethes. Show me a columnist who doesn’t get hate mail, and I’ll show you someone who’s writing about the pesky worms on his tomato plants."

"B.D. Harper had not risen to the pinnacle of his profession by making enemies. His mission, in fact, had been quite the opposite: to make as many friends as possible and offend no one. Harper had been good at this. He positively excreted congeniality. (Chapter 3)"

"It was then that he had gotten the idea to invite journalists, but not just any journalists: travel writers. Sparky Harper and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce adored travel writers because travel writers never wrote stories about street crime, water pollution, fish kills, beach erosion, refugees, AIDS epidemics, nuclear accidents, cocaine smugglers, gun-runners, or race riots. Once in a while, a daring travel writer would mention one of these subjects in passing, but strictly in the context of a minor setback from which South Florida was pluckily rebounding. (Chapter 26)"

"Bass magazines promote the species as the working man's fish, available to anyone within strolling distance of a lake, river, culvert, reservoir, rockpit, or drainage ditch. The bass is not picky; it is hardy, prolific, and on a given day will eat just about any God-awful lure dragged in front of its maw. As a fighter it is bullish, but tires easily; as a jumper its skills are admirable, though no match for a graceful rainbow trout or tarpon; as table fare it is blandly acceptable, even tasty when properly seasoned. Its astonishing popularity comes from a modest combination of these traits, plus the simple fact that there are so many largemouth bass swimming around that just about any damn fool can catch one. (Chapter 2)"

"He won the governorship running as a Democrat, but proved to be unlike any Democrat or Republican that the state of Florida had ever seen. To the utter confusion of everyone in Tallahassee, Clinton Tyree turned out to be a completely honest man. (Chapter 10)"

""You can't talk to me like that! You just remember who's the star." "And you just remember who writes all your lines, and who does all your dull, dull research. Remember who tells you what questions to ask, and who edits these pieces so you don't come off looking like a pompous airhead." Except that's exactly how Reynaldo came off, most of the time. There was no way around it, no post-production wizardry that could disguise the man's true personality on tape. (Chapter 5)"

"In the past he had always counted on Christina to worry about the actual nuts-and-bolts journalism of the program. It was Christina who did the reporting, blocked out the interviews, arranged for the climactic confrontations--she even wrote the scripts. Reynaldo Flemm was hopelessly bored by detail, research, and the rigors of fact-checking. He was an action guy, and he saved his energy for when the tape was rolling. (Chapter 25)"

"[Rudy] didn't give two hoots about certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, or the American Board of Facial and Reconstructive Surgery, or the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. What were a couple more snotty plaques on the wall? His patients could care less. They were rich and vain and impatient. In some exclusive South Florida circles, Rudy's name carried the glossy imprimatur of a Gucci or a de la Renta. The lacquered old crones at La Gorce or the Biltmore would point at each other's shiny chins and taut necks and sculpted eyelids and ask, not in a whisper, but in a haughty bray, "is that a Graveline?" Rudy was a designer surgeon. To have him suck your fat was an honor, a social plum, a mark (literally) of status. Only a boor, white trash or worse, would ever question the man's techniques or complain about the results. (Chapter 30)"

"Like everything else at the Amazing Kingdom, the Vole Project had begun as a scheme to compete with Walt Disney World. Years earlier, Disney had tried to save the dusky seaside sparrow, a small marsh bird whose habitat was being wiped out by over-development along Florida's coastline. With much fanfare, Disney had unveiled a captive breeding program for the last two surviving specimens of the dusky. Unfortunately, the last two surviving specimens were both males, and even the wizards of Disney could not induce the scientific miracle of homosexual procreation. Eventually the sparrow fell to extinction, but the Disney organization won gobs of fawning publicity for its conservation efforts. (Chapter 2)"

"Like many wildly successful Floridians, Francis X. Kingsbury was a transplant. He had moved to the Sunshine State in balding middle age, alone and uprooted, never expecting that he would become a multimillionaire. And like so many new Floridians, Kingsbury was a felon on the run. Before moving to Miami, he was known by his real name of Frankie King. Not Frank, but Frankie. His mother had named him after the singer Frankie Lane. All his life, Frankie King had yearned to change his name to something more distinguished, something with weight and social bearing. A racketeering indictment--seventeen counts--out of Brooklyn was as good an excuse as any. (Chapter 5)"

"Reluctantly Jake Harp had agreed to play nine holes. He didn't like golf with rich duffers, but it was part of the deal. Playing with Francis X. Kingsbury, though, was a special form of torture. All he talked about was Disney this and Disney that. If the stock had dropped a point or two, Kingsbury was euphoric. If the stock was up, he was bellicose and depressed. He referred to the Disney mascot as Mickey Ratface, or sometimes simply The Rat. (Chapter 13)"

"Malcolm J. Moldowsky did not hesitate to address United States Congressman Dave Dilbeck as "a card-carrying shithead." (Chapter 2)"

""But she's just a stripper." Moldowsky grabbed Dilbeck's shirt. "Fanne Fox," he said, "was 'just a stripper.' Donna Rice was just a model-slash-actress. Elizabeth Ray was just a secretary who couldn't type. Gennifer Flowers was just a country singer. Don't you get it? Ask Chuck Robb. Or that horny idiot Hart. Teddy Kennedy for pity's sake. They'll all tell you the same: in politics, stealing is trouble, but pussy is lethal." (Chapter 23)"

""Those who ignore history," Moldowsky said, "are doomed to get their nuts cut." (Chapter 23)"

"Bodean James Gazzer had spent thirty-one years perfecting the art of assigning blame. His personal credo - everything bad that happens is someone else's fault - could, with imagination, be stretched to fit any circumstance. Bode stretched it. The intestinal unrest that occasionally afflicted him surely was the result of drinking milk taken from secretly radiated cows. The roaches in his apartment were planted by his filthy immigrant next-door neighbors. His dire financial plight was caused by runaway bank computers and conniving Wall Street Zionists; his bad luck in the South Florida job market, prejudice against English-speaking applicants. Even the lousy weather had a culprit: air pollution from Canada, diluting the ozone and derailing the jet stream. (Chapter 2)"

""In my business, fear is a sane and very healthy emotion. That's because death and disaster aren't abstractions. They're as goddamn real as real can be." (Chapter 5)"

"Chub's real name was Onus Dean Gillespie. The youngest of seven children, he was born to Moira Gillespie when she was forty-seven, her maternal stirrings long dormant. Onus's father, Greve, was a blunt-spoken man who regularly reminded the boy that the arc of his life had begun with a faulty diaphragm, and that his appearance in Mrs. Gillespie's womb had been as welcome as "a cockroach on a wedding cake." Still, Onus was neither beaten nor deprived as a child. Greve Gillespie made good money as a timber man in northern Georgia and was generous with his family. They lived in a large house with a basketball hoop in the driveway, a second-hand ski boat in the garage, and a deluxe set of World Book encyclopedias in the basement. All of Onus's siblings made it to Georgia State University, and Onus himself could have gone there too, had he not by age fifteen chosen a life of sloth, inebriation and illiteracy. (Chapter 7)"

"To meet someone with genuine political ideals was a rarity in Stoat's line of work. As a lobbyist, he had long ago concluded that there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same; it was always about favors and friends and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. So at election time, Stoat advised his clients to hedge generously by donating large sums to all sides. The strategy was as immensely pragmatic as it was cynical. Stoat himself was registered independent, but he hadn't stepped inside a voting booth in fourteen years. He couldn't take the concept seriously; he knew too much. (Chapter 5)"

"Honey, sometimes you’re going to be faced with situations where the line isn’t clear between what’s right and what’s wrong. Your heart will tell you to do one thing, and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that’s left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment. (Chapter 13)"

"At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic. I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves. (Chapter 1)"

"Admiring the silken calfskin sheaths, Chaz felt a knot of remorse in his gut. It passed momentarily, like acid reflux. (Chapter 1)"

"At heart Chaz Perrone was irrefutably a cheat and a maggot, but he had always shunned violence as dutifully as a Quaker elder. Nobody who knew him, including his few friends, would have imagined him capable of homicide. Chaz himself was somewhat amazed that he'd gone through with it. (Chapter 2)"

"The dog proved to be as dumb and stubborn as a mud fence, so Stranahan had named him Strom. (Chapter 2)"

"Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default. Medical school had been his first goal--specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the notion of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing x-rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation." (Chapter 5)"

"It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other. (Chapter 5)"

"Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren't sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. (Chapter 6)"

""Please don't grow up to be one of those men who lie for the sport of it, and most men do. That's a fact... That's why the world is so messed-up, Noah. That's why history books are full of so much heartache and tragedy. Politicians, dictators, kings, phony-baloney preachers--most of 'em are men, and most of 'em lie like rugs. Don't you dare grow up to be like that."(Chapter 3)"

"It would have been understandable for a mother at that moment to stare at her spoiled, hapless offspring and doubt herself, or at least feel hobbled with remorse. Yet long ago Janet Bunterman had willingly accepted the role of her daughter's primary enabler, exploiter, and apologist, reasoning that such duties were better handled within the family. The fact that the whole pathetic clan was financially dependent on Cherry was the galvanizing force behind her mother's devotion, though Janet Bunterman preferred a more noble rationalization. Even though Cherry didn't write her own lyrics, and the vocals were shamelessly overdubbed, her music still brought happiness to millions of loyal young fans. It was them for whom Janet Bunterman imagined herself sacrificing so tirelessly. (Chapter 16)"

"Raven sighed to herself. She was accustomed to working around Derek's enormous ego, but there were times when she felt like reminding him that he was basically a tap dancer, not a grizzled woodsman. (Chapter 3)"

""Lady, do I look like a bleeping babysitter?" "He nearly died." "Yeah, because he's a fool. There's no known cure for that." (Chapter 6)"

"The pilot episode of Bayou Brethren was a major disappointment, the visual appeal of high-def hog shit having been seriously overestimated by a network vice president who was summarily promoted to a more harmless position. The new network vice president in charge of the project felt the brothers needed a more esoteric vocation, to distract from their unappealing personalities, a view shared by potential advertisers who'd screened the off-putting pilot. (Chapter 1)"

"The show's producers had strategically cultivated a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance clan, and those who identified with it. Each week, the writers strived to portray the brothers on a social bandwidth halfway between harmless rednecks and odious white trash. It was a precarious tightwire. (Chapter 14)"

"For all its daring, the plan was also laughably, fatally absurd. Later his mother would tell reporters that it proved she was right about living downwind from the paper mills. All those toxic vapors obviously stewed poor Benny's brain cells. A goddamn squirrel had more sense. (Chapter 19)"

"Buck stared at this degenerate ambassador for his own popularity, wondering how many other Brethren fans were homicidal, nut-job stalkers. Maybe it's time to quit the show and go fishin, he thought for the first time since Blister had removed his handcuffs. Dump the family. Move into the condo with Miracle. He wasn't sure how much money he had in the bank--five, six million bucks? Krystal would grab half, but so be it. An unhurried, unexamined existence looked pretty sweet to Buck--a life free from soggy collard greens, rooster shit, and all those f**king TV cameras in his face. (Chapter 19)"

"She fell asleep anticipating another enigmatic dream. Tonight's feature starred the Commander-in-Chief himself. Angie had been summoned to Casa Bellicosa to unfasten a screech owl from the Presidential pompadour, which the low-swooping raptor had mistaken for a roadkill fox. When Angie arrived, the Commander-in-Chief was lurching madly around the helipad, bellowing and clawing at the Velcro skullcap into which the confused bird had embedded its talons. The owl was still clutching a plug of melon-colored fibers when Angie freed it. Swiftly she was led to a windowless room and made to sign a document stating she'd never set foot on the property or glimpsed the President without his hair. A man wearing a Confederate colonel's uniform and a red baseball cap stepped forward and hung a milk chocolate medal around Angie's neck, after which she was escorted at sword point out the gates. She awoke with renewed certainty that Carl Jung was full of shit. (Chapter 2)"

"At first she had disliked the code name chosen for her by the Secret Service. Then she'd watched a YouTube video about actual mockingbirds, which were crafty, graceful, and melodious. Like me, she thought. Once upon a time. The President's Secret Service code name was "Mastodon." He loved it. "Perfect!" he'd boomed when he was told. "Fearless, smart, and tough!" And enormous, she'd said to herself. Don't forget f**king enormous. On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his Chief of Staff to arrange a trip to the National Zoo for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The Chief of Staff wasn't brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the Zoo's beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about "those snotty Kiwis" and soon gotten sidetracked by another daft notion. (Chapter 5)"

""You think he could be right about this Diego kid being involved in the old woman's death?" Ryskamp looked up with a rueful smile. "Don't you get it? It doesn't f**king matter whether he's right or not. That's the scary part." (Chapter 10)"

"Mockingbird sometimes found it hard to believe this was the same man she'd married. He looked like a different person now, as if someone had put a fire hose up his ass and inflated him with meringue. His ego seemed to have swollen proportionately. It wasn't that long ago when she'd fallen hard for him. Now he was a raging, gaseous oaf. Gone was any trace of the sly charm and tenderness. In their early years, he could actually laugh at himself, but Mockingbird couldn't recall the last time she'd seen an honest smile on his face. (Chapter 17)"

"Ryskamp stared up at the constellations and took a long, quiet breath. "Okay. What about the First Lady? She weighs a hundred and twenty-one pounds." "The python would have to be exceptionally large and hungry," Angie explained, "and the First Lady would have to be exceptionally unlucky. These things aren't like Rottweilers. You can't train 'em to seek and attack." She smiled grimly. "Can you guys believe this f**ked-up conversation?" (Chapter 18)"

"Angie tried not to think much about politics. It didn't seem to matter who was in power. Nothing got better in the besieged, breathtaking world she cared about most. The Everglades would never be the lush, unbroken river it once was; the shallows of Florida Bay would never be as pure and sparkling with fish; the bleached, dying reefs of the Keys would never bloom back to life. Being overrun and exploited was the historical fate of places so rare and beautiful. Every year, Angie diligently wrote checks to the Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, but she was too much of a loner to jump into the fray. No meetings, no rallies, no Facebook petitions. Never once had she fired off an angry letter to a congressman or a county commissioner. Sometimes she wondered if she was too cynical or just too lazy. The sitting President of the United States was a soulless imbecile who hated the outdoors, but in Angie's view, at this point Teddy Roosevelt himself couldn't turn the tide if he came back from the dead. All the treasured wilderness that had been sacrificed at the altar of growth was gone for all time. More disappeared every day. Nothing ever changed, except the speed of destruction, and only because there were fewer pristine pieces to sell off, carve up, and pave. (Chapter 24)"

""Okay, Angie, just to be clear," Ryscamp said, clearing his throat, "you're telling me the crazy old f**k fed LSD to a twenty-four-foot killer python?" "Look, I know you guys don't train for situations like this..." "There's never been a situation like this!" (Chapter 27)"

""I know you're not a stupid person, so why would you ask such a stunningly stupid question?" (Chapter 28)"

""'The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.' That's from Emerson, by the way. All I was hoping to do is stretch some goddamn minds." (Epilogue)"

"He has a wonderful ear for dialogue."

"There's clearly going to be some conflict between the worldview of a left-leaning, alternative press cartoonist and that of a wealthy New York real estate and publishing magnate."

"There were millions of people in the streets protesting the war, but no one listened to us. It’s really amazing how quickly it went from sugar to shit and so obvious... Right wing blogs used to write about their contribution to the war, which was, I guess, typing."

"Waiting for the next debt crisis."

"A NRA Debate Tips. Afraid of big government taking away your guns? Here are six arguments you can use to defend yourself."

"Gun Talk: With Your Host, the Glib Sociopath Because, freedom. Duh."

"Running Out of Stuff to Do? Try Freaking Out. If you get through all of these suggestions, try doing them again!"

"As protests erupt across the country, the president hides behind a big, beautiful wall."

"The Right Is Scared of the Protests. Defunding the police? Dethroning Confederate monuments? What’s next, a better tomorrow?"

"These protests must stop! Things are fine! There is no problem we can't address with vague promises of incremental reform. Now these whiners are upset because some old man got pushed over and fractured his skull! And because some protesters have been tear gassed! Or you know, shot in the head with rubber bullets and maybe lost an eye here and there!"

"Take his depiction of the recent boom of right wing bloggers. The strip begins with a large man posting pro-war messages on his blog. When an e-mail asks him why he doesn’t enlist if he’s so supportive of the military, he’s hit with carpal tunnel syndrome, desperately shouting “Ma, do we have any more Cheetos?” The cartoon wasn’t particularly popular with conservative bloggers, but then again that’s not the point...Don Perkins, the man behind Tom Tomorrow, explained at a book reading at The Booksmith on Haight St. “Literally every right wing blogger in the world spent the rest of the week writing about how they’re not, you know, fat.”"

"Tom Tomorrow’s comics usually feature biting satire of political leaders, especially conservatives, and always have smiling characters reminiscent of 1950s pop art. Hell in a Handbasket contains four years worth of strips encompassing the Bush administrations response to the September 11th attacks and the war on Iraq. In one panel published around the battle of Baghdad, Dick Cheney quips “Let’s skip to the quagmire!” in anticipation of a long stay in Iraq. In fact, though his art may be farcical, Perkins said he merely puts on paper what many Americans are thinking."

"After less than six months, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow has lost his biweekly gig at U.S. News & World Report. Tomorrow's departure does not stem from a conflict with U.S. News editor James Fallows. "I love his work," Fallows told the Voice, expressing "personal regret" over Tomorrow's involuntary termination. "I probably like his strip more than anyone else in the world," Fallows said. In fact, the two shared an amicable postdismissal dinner last week at Hamburger Harry's... The decision not to renew Tomorrow's contract, knowledgeable sources say, was influenced by U.S. News owner and editor in chief Mort Zuckerman."

"Doing something controversial was never my intention. This was just my sense of humor, and the kind of humor in my family. I never drew anything my mom wouldn’t have laughed at. Of course, my mom was insane. I’m kidding! Well, maybe a little."

"My own benchmark for success was pretty basic — I just wanted to be able to pay my rent. Beyond reaching that goal I really didn’t care much. I was doing something I loved, getting by, and that’s what mattered. So, in my own eyes, I think I became successful somewhere in my second year. But I’m not sure I ever quite shook the sense that the whole thing might be a house of cards. I always felt like yesterday’s cartoon was yesterday’s cartoon, and I was only as funny as today’s."

"When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it's funny"

"I think as my career has gone on, my friends and I have been generating more and more beautiful or poignant moments. That’s not to say that everything we do is genius. But along the way there’s a lot of broken eggshells. There’s a lot of things we’ve said that’s retarded or not funny or goes over the line. That’s what happens when you’re trying to do what we do. And we tend to slant more out of bounds than other people do. So if people get pissed off in the process, that sucks. That’s not a good thing."

"Don't worry so much about money. Worry about if people start deciding to kill reporters. That's a quote. For the reason why, you can say I want reporters to know I make more money than them, especially Matt Pearce."

"Hasan Piker I'm coming to kill you, ... no in real life"

"Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War. During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors."

". A lot of people aren’t really liberals, they’re conservatives. They’ve just never heard what a conservative believes from a conservative. All I ever knew was what liberals said conservatives believed. I knew that Democrats like peace and Republicans like war. Well, I like peace. I must be a Democrat. Democrats like air and water. I like air and water. I must be a Democrat."

"He sat in the window thinking. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature . . . the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while."

"The energy of American Jewish writers was so charged, so buoyant, that for a time they appeared to dominate American fiction. But there was so little Jewish energy in this art that one could invent parlor games over the ethnic or religious identity of its authors: Edna Ferber? Waldo Frank? Lillian Hellman? Nathanael West? Norman Mailer? E. L. Doctorow?"

"That's not to say Gilbert is just unlucky. Oh, he is, but it goes beyond that. Gilbert manages always to be Old Man [Trouble]'s sorriest victim and, at the same time, his most indispensable collaborator. Fate and fate alone may place the banana peel in his path, but it is Gilbert who will every time make certain that at the moment of rendezvous he's carrying a tray laden with Baccarat crystal which he has, in order to impress a date, borrowed without the knowledge or permission of its owner, and which he'd been hoping to return in secret. (Chapter 1)"

"Comics was the thing that I always wanted to be able to do."

"I'm hard-pressed to think of a thing that happened in politics that is purely just comedy, because people's lives are at stake. I think the worst kind of political cartoon is just, like, "Look at this thing that happened." Like, "Here's a drawing of a news event with nothing to say about it." No point of view, nothing to say. That's not funny to me. What is funny to me is a point of view. It's something to say that is interesting or surprising about the subjects. Like, what is bad about Trump? 'Cause there's a million things, right? I think what's bad about Trump is the system that produced him. I try to think much more about the root causes of things and less about the aesthetic differences that I have with a politician. The jokes that are just like, "Oh, Trump's hands are small" are less funny to me. It's a little easy to poke fun at a person; it's harder and more interesting to poke fun at a structure. Because when you see Trump do something, it's not just him; it's hundreds of thousands of people enabling his policy-it's a whole support system there. For me, it was really clarifying when Trump was elected. A lot of the reaction, especially the more center-left, was like, "Oh no, Trump has dropped out of space, like from a meteorite. He's this rogue figure!" That's distorting everything he is. You can draw an extremely straight line from where the Republican Party was at with Reagan to Trump. I think it's more interesting to talk about that stuff."

"My style is very self-taught. I sort of taught myself drawing from watching The Simpsons and reading The Far Side. I think you can see those two things come out in my comics. I really like drawing gross stuff. I really like drawing gooey shit. I like to draw Ted Cruz, because he's really melty. I love to draw someone melting, or with extra eyeballs. I love a skull. Fire is really fun. So there's all these things that I just like to draw, and they'll end up in my comics."

"The reality of how America functions is it's hard to be an artist, period. It's really undervalued work. You have to convince so many people to like what you are doing before you can do it all the time. That's a real barrier, and it's scary and seems impossible. For a long time, I had, like, three strips a week running on various websites and I wasn't getting paid for any of it. The Nib was the first paid work ever got. It's important, I think, to step back and think, "Oh man, I managed to do this." Now I'm doing it full time. And it is unserious and unprofitable, but at least I'm happy with it."

"Your heroes aren't gods, they're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else."

"Remember that there are elements of your personality you are totally unaware of that are immediately apparent to any stranger within five minutes of meeting you"

"...in isolation, human minds tend to get strange, like a self-portrait painted from memory, in the dark, using a live snake as a brush."

"There's an old saying that a child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. I'd update it to say the child not sufficiently entertained by the village will burn it down for the spectacle."