H. L. Mencken Quotes

I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.

I disagree with the prevailing point of view of some black leaders that special treatment for blacks is acceptable.

I was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong.

The very men to whom the whole country looks to set an example …to accept … the personal inconvenience, are doing exactly the reverse …. They are cackling like wet hens to hold their special privilege.

I've been taught that human nature is such that the place of privilege most often and most naturally leads to a sense of entitlement. The notion that I deserve to be treated as special because I'm privileged. The truth is, privilege should never lead to entitlement.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

In America, many marginally competent or flatly incompetent whites are hired every day -some because their white skin suits the conscious or unconscious racial preference of their employers. The white children of alumni are often grandfathered into elite universities in what can only be seen as a residual benefit of historic white privilege.

To abandon affirmative action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination.

I think that liberal straight white men really need to stop patting themselves on the back for what they think they think and actually take a look at their actions.

In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that's where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on. By that, I mean people like the Palestinians. When I go to India, I see really the poorest people, and I tend to be drawn to them.

I don't subscribe to the view that people who are better off don't want to live in a more equal society.

I hate the unfairness of injustice. Anybody who thinks they are better than others or 'chosen' or feel they have an entitlement... be it through monarchy, government or money. I think we are all born the same. We are entitled to an equal shot at life.

But at the end of the day, the lottery of birth shouldn't determine your value to the world.

This idea of, oh, poor little black person, oh, poor little poor person, oh, poor little woman, oh, poor little indigenous person - everybody's a poor little something! I don't try and please everybody.

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

Economic growth is the key to everything. But once you have economic growth, it is important that we reach out to people who live in the shadows, the people who don't seem to ever think that they get a fair deal. And that includes people in our minority community; that includes people who feel as though they don't have a chance to move up.

Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities - members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. We have this ludicrous bureaucratic sense that certain racial groups, regardless of class, are minorities. So what happens is those "minorities" at the very top of the ladder get chosen for everything.

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate.

One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can't be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong.

No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.

So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.

We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others... It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.

It is the height of stupidity to claim that men who for a thousand years have had the power to berate us, to fleece us and to oppress us with impunity, will now agree, with good grace, to be our equals.