"Consider... the university professor. What is his function?……" — H. L. Mencken
"Consider... the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons."
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H. L. Mencken
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647 Quotes by H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken has 647 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever…
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People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.
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Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he…
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Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God…
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more…
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Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong...
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is…
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services…
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Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those…
See all 647 quotes by H. L. Mencken »
More Activity Quotes
This quote is filed under Activity Quotes,
one of 1,646 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words…
— Margaret Atwood
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If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always…
— Roger Bannister
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Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough.
— Dave Barry
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To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.
— Martha Beck
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
— Alan Bennett
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The activity of a singer that sings opera is similar to that of an athlete.
— Andrea Bocelli
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The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
— William J. H. Boetcker
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Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
— Edward de Bono
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Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
— Jorge Luis Borges
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I'm just trying to spread the word and upturn the myth that actually you should be resting after cancer treatment.…
— Jo Brand
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Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in…
— Jacob Bronowski
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Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls…
— Bill Bryson
See all 1,646 Activity Quotes »