Quote

To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.

H. L. Mencken

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Things
Suspicious
People
Teaches
Citizen
Believes
Extent
Educated
Average
Believe
Genuinely

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
H. L. Mencken
Image
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
H. L. Mencken
Image
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
H. L. Mencken
Image
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
H. L. Mencken