Heywood Broun

“A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.”

“I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.”

“Increasingly, it becomes evident that managing a ball club is a psychiatrist's job. In a short series, the mental attitude of the combatants is everything.”

“I have always held to the theory that too much chalk may be just as bad for a novel as for a knee joint.”

“Hell is paved with great granite blocks hewn from the hearts of those who said, I can do no other.”

“The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.”

“I do know that whenever a player hits the ball out of the park, I have a sense of elation. I feel as if I had done it.”

“Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”

“Every now and then, we hear parents commenting on the fearful things which motion pictures may do to the minds of children. They seem to think that a little child is full of sweetness and of light. We had the same notion until we had a chance to listen intently to the prattle of a three-year-old.”

“We are under no delusions as to the innate goodness even of very small children. They are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has been knocked out of them, they see no limit to the potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith to move mountains, because they do not yet know the fearful heft of them.”

“Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.”

“The most casual examination will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a great scheme of sex propaganda.”

“I do not see a necessary connection between proletarian literature and some set percentage of words which bring the blushes to a maiden's cheek.”

“Any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that.”

“People who come up through life or literature the hard way must inevitably carry their scars with them into composition.”

“Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.”

“The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don't read.”

“It is ridiculous to say that Sacco and Vanzetti are being railroaded to the chair. The situation is much worse than that. This is a thing done cold-bloodedly and with deliberation. But care and deliberation do not guarantee justice.”

“The editorial strategy of the 'World' is seemingly rested upon the theory that in a desperate cause, it is well to ask a little less than you hope to get. I think you should ask more.”

“Perhaps the most startling reversal of tradition came in the case of Lefty Grove. He shattered the cruel slanders which have always followed lefthanders.”