H. L. Mencken Quotes

. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.

Nothing is so uncertain or unpredictable as the feelings of a crowd.

The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

What can we say with certainty?

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha. "I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.

Feelings are not everything! There is very little absolute truth in life.

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

It is proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob.

He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out.

God alone knows absolute Truth.

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

The truth, it needs no proof. Either it is or it isn't.

Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.

Answers given with authority negate the search for truth.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.

When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.