H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety
This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
The dying man doesn't struggle much and he isn't much afraid. As his alkalies give out he succumbs to a blest stupidity. His mindfogs. His will power vanishes. He submits decently. He scarcely gives a damn.
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?