Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes
explicable.
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Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
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Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows
to be idiots.
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Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
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There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is
the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
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All zoos actually offer the public, in return for the taxes spent upon them,
is a form of idle witless amusment, compared to which a visit to the state
penitentiary, or even a state legislature in session, is informing,
stimulating and enobling.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably
not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger
cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman
for a purely moral reason.
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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.
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The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is
always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
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People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they
might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a
group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some
better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any
respect.
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All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually
all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious
and well-disposed man.
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For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail
again.
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On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
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Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of
children in arms and men in love.
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia - to
mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to
discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the
miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of
superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set the above their
betters.
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The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and
lovely. The artist is a sort of impassioned proofreader, blue-penciling the
bad spelling of God.
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For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe,
but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
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The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his
hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.
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Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice
as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
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No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and
deserve to get it good and hard.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to
prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and
are right.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously
grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as
dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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Say what you will about the ten commandments; you must always come back to
the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
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It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
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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.
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All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it
anyhow.
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The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings
wisdom.
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The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is
identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply
opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is
cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse
than the first one.
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No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular
arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad
idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.
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Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other
philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he
also usually proves that he is one himself.
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School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human
existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant
ordinances, brutal violations of common sense amd common decency. It doesn't
take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed
into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he
learns it or not.
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This page was last modified on Friday, July 28, 2000 5:51:29 AM
----- Original Message -----
From: "William J. McCleary" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2000 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: Non-doozie question
> I have to disagree with Carla about her rule requiring two spaces between
> sentences. When a rule changes, I don't think it's a good idea for English
> teachers to insist on keeping the old rule, come hell or high water. I
> might follow the old rule myself (I intend to go to my grave without
having
> used "impact" as a verb), but I will not insist that students follow my
> quirks.
>
> I also think we have to follow a hierarchy of importance when we teach
> writing. When I teach basic writing, "regular" freshman composition,
> business writing, or advanced comp, I do not bring up such questions as
how
> many spaces should follow a period. If someone asks, I will give my
> opinion. Only when I teach tech writing might I consider the issue of
> enough importance to bring it up.
>
> Also, when I teach students to edit peers' papers, I try to teach them not
> to apply their own pet peeves to the editing. I tell them that we have
> enough real problems to deal with, so let's not spend our time correcting
> things that don't need to be corrected.
>
> I suppose if I were teaching courses such as page layout with PageMaker or
> editing and copyreading of publications, I would find it necessary to
> discuss the spacing rule or even to impose a rule on my students. But in
> other situations, students can use the old rule or the new one.
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> >I teach in this area, and have vocational certification at secondary and
> >post-secondary levels.
> >
> >This is my rule: TWO SPACES BETWEEN SENTENCES.
> >
> >You do not change your standard.
> >
> >In fact, my extended rule is that IF the punctuation has a period at the
> >bottom: :, !, ?, or . --then it is two spaces afterwards (unless it is
> >followed by an end quote or it is at the end of the paragraph.)
> >
> >If it has a comma at the bottom (, or ;) then it is one space afterwards.
> >
> >MY BACKGROUND:
> >I used to do professional, computerized phototypesetting for things such
> >as the Minnesota Supreme Court Journal, and other publications.
> >
> >HERE IS SOME OF MY JUSTIFICATION:
> >1. If you have good software, then the software can decide when to use a
> >thick- or thin-space when doubling spaces between sentences.
Professional
> >software which can do this includes the kind of technology where the
> >operator can make end-of-line decisions for greater aesthetics and
> >precision.
> >2. As I said above, you "keep the standard."
> >3. In some circumstances, when you don't have professional software--for
> >aesthetic purposes, you may want to keep certain text together on a line,
> >and with normal software (such as Microsoft Word, etc., where you cannot
> >adjust the spacing BETWEEN LETTERS IN A WORD), then to keep text
together,
> >on a case-by-case basis, that is when I will violate my own rule. BUT
> >NEVER TEACH YOUR STUDENTS to consistently break the rule to save space in
> >a text (i.e. for the school's yearbook or newspaper).
> >4. The double space between sentences helps your reader. Whatever helps
> >your reader is a plus. The period is a very small "speck" on a page. It
> >is an excellent indicator of an auto-glottal stop. The double space
makes
> >this more apparent, and this is why I say it helps your reader.
> >5. I have some students who come to me, and they are used to typing
their
> >papers in a WAD of text. White space enhances aesthetics and
> >readibility. Let's not throw space away. It serves an important
> >function.
> >6. Michael, you mention another reason: Automaticity. Those of us who
> >learned to type correctly have the double space automaticitized. That is
> >a good thing, so leave it alone. Have your students develop the same
good
> >habit.
> >
> >Carla Cruzan
> >
> >> A colleague asked me today if we're still leaving two spaces after
> >> periods, b oth in running text and within MLA citations. I seem to
> >> remember that word-processing has brought about a change in the rule,
but
> >> I can't find anything in the handbooks in my office. I myself can't
stop
> >> myself from putting two spaces after periods, but that's no guide to
the
> >> current rule. Can anybody help?
> >>
> >>
>
>
> William J. McCleary
> 3247 Bronson Hill Road
> Livonia, NY 14487
> 716-346-6859
|
