Quote

Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.

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
Actually
Argue
May
Decline
Might
Arguing
Right
Stupidity
Pervading
Even
Degrees
Freezing
Men
Intelligent
Temperature
Mankind
Superstitions
Belief
Hence

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
H. L. Mencken
Image
God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
H. L. Mencken
Image
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
H. L. Mencken