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
"I don't believe in taking fools by the hand, but I do believe in attracting them to my shows."
"And in what business is there not humbug?"
"I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall show, but the solid gold will never wear off."
"The public is always ready to pay for a good show."
"Politeness and good manners are like sunshine to an audience."
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.