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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 35

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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

Science, Intellectual, Demand

'Minority Report'. Collected in Notebooks (1956).

The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy; he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.

Punishment, Understanding, Opponents

It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.

Food, Land, Pork

H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.11, 谷月社

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

Failure, Learning, Men

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

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

Beautiful, Science, Technology

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.26, Knopf

Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably useless.

Beautiful, Half, Useless

The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

Country, War, Men

What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.

Fear, Reflection, Issues

H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.

Men, Atheism, Rivals

Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.

Fame, Stage, Trembling

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

The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.

Atheism, Facts, World

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.71, Vintage

Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.

Dog, Easy, Canine

No man ever quite believes in any other man.

Believe, Men, Quitting

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.

War, Thinking, Break Through

The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!

Home, Thinking, History

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

Funny, Witty, Laughter

The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.

Ends, Motive, Thinness

Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.

Democracy, Sound, Schemes

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

Book, Reading, Animal

Notebooks (1956) "Minority Report"

Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

Funny, Freedom, Temptation

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

History, Historical, Novelists

"A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.

Race, Intellectual, Minorities

Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow.

Writing, Giving, Doe

What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none.

May, Human Life, Humans

It seems to me that a great university ought to have room in it for men subscribing to every sort of idea that is currently prevalent

Men, Ideas, Rooms

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