{"id":238,"date":"2010-02-02T02:13:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T07:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emprendedor.com\/2015\/?p=238"},"modified":"2015-02-02T02:31:28","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T07:31:28","slug":"h-l-mencken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"H. L. Mencken"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"h-l-mencken\"<\/a>

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.<\/span><\/p>\n

Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem \u2014 neat, plausible, and wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians \u2014 and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic.<\/span><\/p>\n

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.<\/span><\/p>\n

No man, I suppose, ever admits to himself candidly that he gets his living in a dishonourable way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nature abhors a moron.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer’s mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.<\/span><\/p>\n

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.<\/span><\/p>\n

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Platitude \u2014 An idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remorse \u2014 Regret that one waited so long to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-respect \u2014 The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth \u2014 Something somehow discreditable to someone.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Historian \u2014 An unsuccessful novelist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christian \u2014 One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judge \u2014 A law student who marks his own examination-papers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jury \u2014 A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lawyer \u2014 One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wealth \u2014 Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.<\/span><\/p>\n

Misogynist \u2014 A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.<\/span><\/p>\n

A man may be a fool and not know it \u2014 but not if he is married.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn’t they’d be married, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.<\/span><\/p>\n

Theology \u2014 An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creator \u2014 A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday \u2014 A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.<\/span><\/p>\n

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.<\/span><\/p>\n

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

Human life is basically a comedy.<\/span><\/p>\n

A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient. Progress: The process whereby the human race has got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emprendedor.site\/2015\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}