Quotable Quotes: Humbug
by Miki Saxon
It’s not that I actively dislike the holidays; it’s more a passive thing. More ‘here we go again’ than ‘bah humbug’. But I do early love the word ‘humbug’.
For those of you who don’t know, ‘humbug’ means
- something intended to delude or deceive.
- the quality of falseness or deception.
- a person who is not what he or she claims or pretends to be; impostor.
- something devoid of sense or meaning; nonsense: a humbug of technical jargon.
It’s an old fashioned word, but the ideas it represents with that in mind, here are some examples of usage and all of
Let’s start with Edmond de Goncourt, who offered this profound insight that’s as true now as it was when he said it more than a century ago, “People don’t like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.”
Winston Churchill weighs in with a wonderfully irreverent (and accurate) comment on “democratic freedom” that really resonates as the 2012 Presidential race starts up, “I had no idea of the enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of great peoples dwelling in a state of democratic freedom.”
Alfred Bernhard Nobel (as in Nobel Prize) said, “Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age,”—whereas these days humbug is second to none.
And now, I leave you with this provocative tidbit from Norton Juster, “’How can you see something that isn’t there?’ yawned the Humbug, who wasn’t fully awake yet.
‘Sometimes it’s much simpler than seeing things that are,’ he said. ‘For instance, if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can just as easily see it with your eyes closed.’”
Flickr image credit: Dana Lookadoo
