Critique Quotes

The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

But what makes wage slaves? Wages!

Every past is worth condemning.

As a career, the business of an orthodox preacher is about as successful as that of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.

A man who whinnies with noisy laughter, surpasses all the animals in vulgarity.

A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers.

There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties.

You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

Government is a kind of legalized pillage.

I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor.... Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

An eminent teacher of girls said, "the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe.

Congress: America's only true criminal class.

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.

After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won't.

Yes, there is a ton of information on the web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.

It is neither holy, Roman or an empire.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

For my part, I wish, with Mr. Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as any one to having these great works weakened or falsified.

Although I cannot lay an egg, I am a very good judge of omelettes

But why should not the New Englander try new adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men.

Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.

A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.

I'm sick of all the reasonable people: they see all the reasons for doing nothing

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

The good-they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end.

When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.

"Fussy eater" is a euphemism for "big pain in the ass."

A woman does not want the truth; what is truth to women? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than the truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.

Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Altogether too many sheep

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires."

Anyhow, I don't think Don King's a very good man. But then again, I doubt that a good man *could* succeed in his business. I'm sure boxing was a dirty sport before he came around. He may have just made it moreso. So that's about all I've got to say about him.

A college degree does not lessen the length of your ears; it only conceals it.

The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side.

The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.

The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.

Calumny is only the noise of madmen.

I admire the, the stand of China and the stand of Mao Tse- tung, but I can't admire with respect the stand of, of Nehru in India. I just can't do it.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

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