"The mistake that is made always runs..." - Quote by H L Mencken
The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
More by H L Mencken
“One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.”
“The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.”
“One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.”
More on Intelligence
“I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.”
“Knowledge is not intelligence.”
“Fifteen referees. I want fifteen referees to be at this fight because there ain't no one man who can keep up with the pace I'm gonna set except me. There's not a man alive who can whup me. I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked.”
More on Society
“The greatest problem in the world today is intolerance. Everyone is so intolerant of each other.”
“Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust of conventions and formalities. It is said that the metallic roofs of Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was on the inhabitants and their institutions.”
“This is really America in therapy, people trying to get themselves together and be whole.”