P.T. Barnum — "The public likes to be astonished, and it likes to be amused."
The public likes to be astonished, and it likes to be amused.
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More from P.T. Barnum
"I have always found that it pays to be a little ahead of the times."
"If I can't be a lion, I'll be a fox."
"Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd."
"I have no desire to be considered a humbug, although I have been called one often enough."
"There's a sucker born every minute, but remember—I'm not one of them."
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.