It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone – that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The men of the educated minority, no doubt, know more than their predecessors, and of […]
(Mencken is reviewing the essays which were submitted to the Mercury’s college competition.) The student body, seen through the eyes of the essayists, came out almost as badly as the faculty. Life at an American college has plainly become more or less uncomfortable to a young man or woman of active and eager mind… What […]
Such works as Milton’s “Areopagitica” and Mill’s “Liberty” are not used as text-books in the American colleges. Surely that is asking far too much. Who could imagine a pedagogue honestly believing in liberty? If he did his life would be one long stultification, for he lives in a world in which he has no rights […]
What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.
To a clergyman lying under a vow of chastity any act of sex is immoral, but his abhorrence of it naturally increases in proportion as it looks safe and is correspondingly tempting. As a prudent man, he is not much disturbed by incitations which carry their obvious and certain penalties; what shakes him is the […]
There is no American who cannot hope to lift himself another notch or two, if he is good; there is absolutely no hard and fast impediment to his progress. But neither is there any American who doesn’t have to keep on fighting for whatever position he has; no wall of caste is there to protect […]
The boons of civilization are so noisily cried up by sentimentalists that we are all apt to overlook its disadvantages. Intrinsically, it is a mere device for regimenting men. Its perfect symbol is the goose-step. The most civilized man is simply that man who has been most successful in caging and harnessing his honest and […]
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
Say what you will against civilization, it has at least got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix, and the Ten Commandments.
