The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Some boys go to college and eventually succeed in getting out. Others go to college and never succeed in getting out. The… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in the Trinity. . . . — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it-… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Consider... the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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 Copy Share
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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 Copy Share
To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
![“[The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f10/h-l-mencken-245_aim_the-erroneous-assumption-is-to-the-effec_1758141.jpg)
