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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 28

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Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and

Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.

Stupid, Knowledge, Science

They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

Children, Freedom, Taken

The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

Strong, Fake, Support

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.

War, Political, Campaigns

"Mencken Chrestomathy".

Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

Perseverance, Belief, Impossible

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.

Fear, Cutting, Men

Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

Government, Effort, Resistance

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.

White, House, Cannibalism

The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob

Lying, Way, Flattering

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.29, Cosimo, Inc.

The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.

Believe, Government, Class

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.91, Knopf

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Book, Men, People

Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic.

Change, Loyalty, Time

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.316, Vintage

Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.

Sorry, Wife

I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

Freedom, Political, Slavery

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.

Hero, Eye, Men

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.27, Knopf

To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.

Believe, Russia, Evil

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Love, Men, Special

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

Men, Safety, Fool

As for Lindbergh, another eminent servant of science, all he proved by his gaudy flight across the Atlantic was that God takes care of those who have been so fortunate as to come into the world foolish. Expressing skepticism that adventure does not necessarily contribute to scientific knowledge.

Adventure, World, Care

Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.

Simple, Problem, Complexes

A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.

Men, Intellectual, Groups

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.69, Knopf

An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.

Men, Artist, Self

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.466, Vintage

Life is a dead-end street.

Life, Dead Ends, Streets

Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

Music, Home, Musician

The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?

Artist, Years, Today

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