This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All well-ordered and modern states can only base themselves upon Courts of Justice and Conduct of Laws which are just, correct and geared towards the protection of the rights of individuals. Justice is a product of education.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
Evil | Man | Pleasure | Understanding |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The older I get the more I am convinced that, if I am ever to do anything worth a damn, it must be done entirely alone. Moreover, I am more comfortable that way.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Will |
And if, fortunately, his best turns out not to be good enough, the reason is that the trial is presided over by someone who serves Justice as faithfully as Mr. Hausner serves the State of Israel. Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended and judged, and that all the other questions of seemingly greater import - of ?How could it happen?,? of ?Why the Jews?? and ?Why the Germans?,? of ?What was the role of other nations?? and ?What was the extent of co-responsibilities on the side of the allies?,? of ?How could the Jews of their own leaders cooperate in their own destruction?? and ?Why did they go to their death like lambs to the slaughter?? - be left in abeyance.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clich‚s. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Today every such man knows that the laws which prevail in the universe, whatever their origin in some remote and incomprehensible First Purpose, manifest themselves in complete impersonality, and that no representation to any superhuman Power, however imagined, can change their operation in the slightest. He knows that when they seem arbitrary and irrational it is not because omnipotent and inscrutable Presences are playing with them, as a child might play with building blocks; but because the human race is yet too ignorant to penetrate to their true workings. The whole history of progress, as the modern mind sees it, is a history of such penetrations. ... Each in its turn has narrowed the dominion and prerogative of the gods.
It is my contention that civil disobediences are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
Man |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims - so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a good many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
Man |
How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men. We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit. But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough. The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. The Organization's sinews have been weakened, as member states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.