Do not overestimate the decency of the human race.
Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn’t like.
Constructive criticism irritates me. I do not object to being denounced, but I can’t abide being school-mastered, especially by men I regard as imbeciles.
Like most other professional writers I get a good many letters from my customers. Complaints, naturally, are far more numerous than compliments; it is only indignation that can induce the average man to brave the ardors of pen and ink.
I believe that the public likes criticism only in so far as it is a good show, which means only in so far as it is bellicose. The crowd is always with the prosecution. Hence, when I have to praise a writer, I usually do it by attacking his enemies. And when I say the […]
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Certainly it is absurd to say that a man who has been taken three or four times running in crimes of violence deserves another chance. In many a case he has had half a dozen chances. Society simply can’t endure criminals who stand ready at all times to butcher innocent people for gain… I agree […]
The objection to sterilizing criminals is mainly theological, and hence irrational… Certainly the chances that he will produce criminal children are sufficiently strong to justify subjecting him to the trivial injury and inconvenience of sterilization. On the one hand the sentimentalists argue that crime is a disease, and on the other hand they deny that […]
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian – and at once the world becomes explicable.
