Quote

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

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
Danger
Full
Botched
Dies
Intends
Process
Benign
Often
Interference
Nature
Dangers
Every
Obviously
Forgotten

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every man is his own hell.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. Mencken