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Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

Ben Hecht

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
BEN HECHT

Connected Men Stupidest
Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
BEN HECHT

Actors Faith People
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT

Eruption Mind People
People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
BEN HECHT

Opinions People Political Sex
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
BEN HECHT

Deceit Desire Lying
Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women’s hair rhapsodically described, women’s faces acclaimed in odelike language.
BEN HECHT

Hair Lasts Television
The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.
BEN HECHT

Art Mass World
Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him.
BEN HECHT

Jobs Stars Writing
I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.
BEN HECHT

Buzzing Clock Everywhere Hour Learn
The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it’s a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it’s a flop.
BEN HECHT

Director Flop Geniuses Head Producer Spear
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
BEN HECHT

Age Allies Intellectual
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
BEN HECHT

Diversity Justice Safety
The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them.
BEN HECHT

Intellectual People Writing
As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
BEN HECHT

Country Cultured Mind People
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
BEN HECHT

Business Reading Time
Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.
BEN HECHT

Bible Book League
I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops.
BEN HECHT

Cities Jail Sleep
Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It’s just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.
BEN HECHT

Castle Views Writing
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
BEN HECHT

Art Fall Medicine Writing
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT

Giving Loyalty Men
Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
BEN HECHT

Product Seventies Waste
Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.
BEN HECHT

Age Dark Mind
He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
BEN HECHT

June Life Love Summer
H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
BEN HECHT

Art Christianity Conflict War
The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
BEN HECHT

Between Curious Difference Good Mark Same Writer
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
BEN HECHT

Fate Moving People
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.
BEN HECHT

Men Wise Yelling

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

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Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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