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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
H. L. Mencken
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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
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Historian
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Literary Critic
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Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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Altruism
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
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Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
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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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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
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For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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