A Mencken Chrestomathy Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of...

A Mencken Chrestomathy

Whenever a woman begins to talk of anything, she is talking to, of, or at a man.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, ...

A Mencken Chrestomathy

A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and ...

A Mencken Chrestomathy

In brief, the teaching process, as commonly observed, has nothing to do with the investigation and establishment of facts, assuming that actual facts may ever be determined. Its sole purpose is to cram the pupils, as rapidly and as painlessly as poss...

A Mencken Chrestomathy