Doubt Quotes by H. L. Mencken

15 Doubt quotes by H. L. Mencken

Mencken’s sharp wit never missed a chance to point out the absurdities of certainty, and his reflections on doubt are no exception. Fifteen pithy observations give a clear picture of his skeptical, often sardonic outlook.

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It is only doubt that creates.

H. L. Mencken

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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

H. L. Mencken

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It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

H. L. Mencken

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Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

H. L. Mencken

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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.

H. L. Mencken

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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

H. L. Mencken

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When I reach the shades at last it will no doubt astonish Satan to discover, on thumbing my dossier, that I was…

H. L. Mencken

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Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions…

H. L. Mencken

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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage?…

H. L. Mencken

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Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing…

H. L. Mencken

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The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead…

H. L. Mencken

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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In…

H. L. Mencken

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A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and…

H. L. Mencken

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Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known…

H. L. Mencken

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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…

H. L. Mencken

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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

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By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.…

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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free…

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Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken

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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

H. L. Mencken

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must…

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There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend…

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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own…

H. L. Mencken

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