9 Carnival Quotes You'll Never Forget
Mini Lessons from the Midway
Traveling Carnivals are a microcosm of society at large. Behind the flashing midway lights is a world of lessons about business, friendship, love, and life in general.
Here are just a few of the quotes that have really stuck with me, and I hope they give you some pause as well. Regardless of how we may now view some ruthless historical showmen, their words continue to be true.
“Organized confusion.”
— Averill Wanous, when asked to describe her traveling show for a newspaper in 1974.
“No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story.”
— P.T. Barnum, 1880
“You’ve got to keep the people happy. In my games I always give a little kid a prize. Win, lose or draw it doesn’t matter to me, I’m happy to see the kid smile and walk away…”
— Richard Miller, fourth-generation Australian showman, 2020.
“There is no such thing in the world as luck.”
— P.T. Barnum, 1880
“It’s real Americana. It’s part of our tradition and pretty soon it won’t be around no more. The carny is like a little city, you know. The rides are like the skyscrapers, and there are all those little stores on the midway. It has its Forty-second Street and its big, expensive rides and things for the little kids and things for the big kids and it moves. It’s sparkling and glittering. Lights fly through the skies and people are laughing and all of a sudden — whoosh! — it’s gone.”
— Robbie Robertson, 1980
“We were a closed society, it was us against the world. That’s not the case today and hasn’t been for a very long time.”
— Frank Zaitshik, 2023
"Poor fool! Not to know that the most difficult thing in life is to make money dishonestly!"
— P.T. Barnum, 1880
“I'll grant my exterior appearance is strange and unusual but that does not hinder me from enjoying life to the fullest extent and from participating in the goodness life has to offer the same as yourself.”
— Percilla Bejano (1911-2001), in one of her Pitchbooks
“I think life is beautiful and I enjoy living it.”
— Frank Lentini, known as “The Three Legged Man”, 1940