P.T. Barnum — "The bigger the humbug, the better the people will like it."
The bigger the humbug, the better the people will like it.
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More from P.T. Barnum
"My inexperienced friend, take it for granted that they all tell the truth -- about each other! -- and then transact your business to the best of your ability on your own judgment."
"The best way to get rich is to give people what they want, and then charge them for it."
"The public is a very strange animal, and it is very difficult to catch it by the tail."
"The public is a great baby. It must be amused, and it must be excited."
"I believe in advertising. I believe in plenty of it."
About P.T. Barnum (1810-1891)
American showman and Barnum & Bailey Circus co-founder, whose autobiography popularized Gilded Age commercial spectacle. Closely associated with James Anthony Bailey (his circus business partner). For an intellectual contrast, see Mark Twain, American author and Gilded Age satirist — Twain's The Gilded Age (1873, with Charles Dudley Warner) named the entire era of corrupt commercial spectacle Barnum embodied — Twain's later writing repeatedly attacked Barnum-style hucksterism as the era's moral disease.