H. L. Mencken Quotes

The American people ... have a stake in con-conformity, for they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

I discovered when I was young that I was not like everyone else, and that was great, because it's the people who are different who bring about change and new things.

Always do something different from the others.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

In differentiation, not uniformity, lies the path of progress.

We have no precedents to guide us, and that is a glorious thing, for precedents, like other guides are disposed to grow tyrannical and refuse to let us do anything on our own initiative. Life grows wearisome in the countries where precedents and conventionality is rule and nothing can happen unless it has happen before.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature

Every day I wake up and that’s my goal, to be on a constant quest for knowledge and do something different, being unique and being uncommon.

I'm appealing to people who want something different, but the world, on the whole, doesn't really embrace different things. Not on the whole.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

Innovation makes the world go round. It brings prosperity and freedom.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.

I stray away from formulaic, the formatted.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

There's nothing worse than having everybody thinking alike, talking alike and having the same direction in mind. It gets stale that way.

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

America has believed that in differentiation, not uniformity, lies the path of progress.

It's important to be unconventional.

I hate anything that seems like something that has been done.

There's not enough people being daring and different. There are a lot of followers in hip-hop.

I just want to inspire people to be different.

You do not move forward by following convention. You celebrate those who are different, who are not burdened by 'normality.'

Everyone's going to like something that's different.

Obvious is not my forte. I take a left turn right when everybody thinks I'm going to go straight.