Quotes from Max Eastman

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

He [P.G.Wodehouse] is I believe, the only man living who speaks with equal fluency the American and English languages.

There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.

Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

Dogs laugh but they laugh with their tails.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

Laughter puts your brain, your central nervous system and your whole being into a state of free play.

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

There is something self-defeating in the too conscious pursuit of pleasure.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar.

The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.

There is something self-defeating in the too-conscious pursuit of pleasure.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.