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
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed… — 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
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
I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong... — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in… — 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
One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are! — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/371/h-l-mencken-245_all-time_thomas-henry-huxley-i-believe-was-the-gr_3218889.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
