P.T. Barnum — "The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being d…"
The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.
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More from P.T. Barnum
"The show must go on, even if the elephants are sneezing."
"And in what business is there not humbug?"
"A little reflection will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon — in fact almost universal."
"The bigger the humbug, the better the show."
"If you want to be rich, you must be a showman."
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.