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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.

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
Natural
Tendency
True
Tendencies
Order
Overcome
Also
Sufficient
Believe
Ignorant
Denounce
Overcoming
Exhibit
False
Exhibits
Necessary
Expose

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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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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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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
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The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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