Max Eastman

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think…

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

If one were loyal to one's nation only because it was good and true ... one would not be loyal to any…

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

— Max Eastman

A smile is the universal welcome.

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. What puts man in a higher state of evolution is that he has got…

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if…

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

“It seems obvious to me now – though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion – that…

— Max Eastman

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. And a tail is an awkward thing to laugh with, as you can see…

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

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

— Max Eastman

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward…

— Max Eastman