A Cynics Primer: B-C-D

Catching up again:

July 22: Poet Stephen Vincent Benet was born July 22, 1898. He wrote:

We do not fight for the real but for the shadows we make;
A flag is a piece of cloth and a words is a sound.



July 23: American mystery writer Raymond Chandler (pictured above) was born July 23, 1880. He wrote:

"Television is just one more facet of that considerable segment of our society that never had any standard but the soft buck." And also:

"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country."



For more on Chandler, visit Today in Farewells

July 24: Alexandre Dumas pere was born July 24, 1802.

"Nobody has read everything of Dumas, not even Dumas himself." -- Anonymous.

And we are the pawns of the latter

Chess champion Bobby Fischer was born on this day in 1943. He died on January 17 of this year.

"Chess is the greatest waste of human intelligence that can be found outside of an advertising agency." -- Raymond Chandler.