"The Public ... demands certainties ... But..." - Quote by H L Mencken

“The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.”

“When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”

“Public credit is suspicion asleep.”

“The land-grant university system is being built on behalf of the people, who have invested in these public universities their hopes, their support, and their confidence.”

“This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.”

“I don't have to know everything that's gonna happen, I know enough.”

“Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.”

“Upon consideration of the central question of the moon's toughness there can be little doubt. It is hella tough.”