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H. L. Mencken Quotes about Philosophy

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The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

H. L. Mencken
Freedom, Philosophy, Ideas

The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with everything we know of the workings of the human mind, and with every sound idea formulated by mankind. If it prevailed in the whole modern world we'd still be in the Thirteenth Century; nay, we'd be back among the Egyptians of the pyramid age. Its only coherent contribution to Western thought has been theosophy-and theosophy is as idiotic as Christian Science. It has absolutely nothing to offer a civilized white man.

H. L. Mencken
Christian, Philosophy, War

What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.

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

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

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

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken
Funny, Philosophy, Science
H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.55, Knopf

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

H. L. Mencken
Truth, Freedom, Philosophy
H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

H. L. Mencken
Philosophy, Trying, World
H. L. Mencken (2003). “Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.92, See Sharp Press

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.

H. L. Mencken
Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.

H. L. Mencken
Philosophy, Mean, Intelligent

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