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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.

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
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Skeptical
Always
Civilized
Men
Field
Based
Fields
Truly
Sure
Culture
Tolerant

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The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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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.
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Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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