Quote

The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

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
Satisfying
Absolutely
Almost
Professing
Faith
Agnosticism
Without
Trusts
Ecstatic
Agnostic
Purely

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
H. L. Mencken
Image
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
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
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Why do men go to zoos?
H. L. Mencken
Image
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
H. L. Mencken