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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
University
Worse
College
Might
Universities
Burn
Damage

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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
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When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
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