"Moral certainty is always a sign of..." - Quote by H L Mencken
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.
More by H L Mencken
“At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.”
“The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
“A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.”
More on Morality
More on Certainty
“I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.”
“If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.”
“Your imagination is ten times more potent than your willpower. Unleashed, it provides a sense of certainty and tenacious vision that goes far beyond any limitation of the past.”