H. L. Mencken Quotes about Science

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[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship

[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

H. L. Mencken

Knowledge, Independent, Science

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the Thirteenth Century, but this yielding is always done grudgingly, and thus lingers a good while behind the event.

H. L. Mencken

Science, Essence, Ideas

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.249, Knopf

Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.

H. L. Mencken

Country, Mistake, Science

The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion.

H. L. Mencken

Science, Way, Science And Religion

There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]

H. L. Mencken

Eye, Science, Conquer The World

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

H. L. Mencken

Mother, Science, Effort

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.248, Knopf

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

H. L. Mencken

Science, Race, Ideas

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

H. L. Mencken

Women, Pregnancy, Science

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

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

H. L. Mencken

Science, Men, Hygiene

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.269, Cosimo, Inc.

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

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.

H. L. Mencken

Stupid, Knowledge, Science