The newly-arrived immigrant’s dominating desire to lose his differentiation as soon as possible. It costs him a lot every day, not only in actual wages but also in social opportunity and in public respect… So long as he remains a palpable foreigner, he is a common butt, and on no higher level than the native […]
Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever never kills; it merely tortures. No […]
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant.
It seems to me that one of the prime jobs of every educated man on this earth is to denounce charlatans. New ones are always popping up, and the common run of idiots are always succumbing to them. There is little if any difference between one and another.
So long as there are men in the world, 99 percent of them will be idiots, and so long as 99 percent of them are idiots they will thirst for religion, and so long as they thirst for religion, it will remain a weapon over them. I see no way out. If you blow up […]
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
There was a time when the American citizen was an idealist himself. Now he is only idealism’s raw material, as a cow is the raw material of butter, ice-cream and custard pie – a stuff milked, tickled, clubbed and pulverized into beauty by ordained virtuosi. I am still so young that my toupee looks natural, […]
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
