P.T. Barnum — "My inexperienced friend, take it for granted that they all tell the truth -- abo…"
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.
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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.