Quotes About Barnum

I think Barnum is at the center of American culture. He's helping to invent what we now think of as pop culture. He invented pretty much our notions of the circus.

Do you want me to kill your father, Barnum?

The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.

I'm actually not a huge circus fan in the traditional sense, but I like a lot of the circus trappings of striped tents and caramel. I lean more towards Cirque du Soleil than Barnum and Bailey.

La casa natale di Shakespeare, se non altro, sfuggì destino preparatogli dall'impresario P.T. Barnum, che negli anni Quaranta dell'Ottocento ebbe l'idea di spedirla negli Stati Uniti, montarla su ruote e mandarla in perpetua tournée per il Paese - prospettiva talmente allarmante che in Gran Bretagna ci si affrettò a raccogliere fondi per salvarla e trasformarla in museo e santuario.

Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

Barnum turned, smirking,

The entertainment lies less in the nature of the attraction (although as Barnum pointed out, a certain amount of "glitter" is essential) than in the implicit competition between patron and promoter, each one seeking to outwit the other in a game of deception and exposure. It was a distinction on which P. T. Barnum would build a career, and it helps to explain the continuing success of the Sun in the aftermath of the moon series.

I could go into some detail about the theological and class differences between the two groups but suffice it to say that Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian and P. T. Barnum a Universalist.