There was, I am sure, neither worldliness nor cunning enough among the lot of us to run a successful candy store. But we had a vantage point, we were not inside the routines of human greed or social pretenses. We were without politeness...We who knew nothing spoke out of a knowledge so overwhelming that I, for one, never recovered from it. Politicians were crooks. The leaders of causes were scoundrels. Morality was a farce full of murder, rapes, and love nests. Swindlers ran the world and the Devil sang everywhere. These discoveries filled me with great joy.
--Ben Hecht, on 1920s journalism
