H. L. Mencken Quotes

Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Books are only the shadow and life the real thing. I believe this as strongly as any belief I hold.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

The frame of the cave leads to the frame of man.

Tomorrow doesn't really exist.

I think it's so completely bizarre and arrogant for anyone to ever think that they could lose their innocence, because that implies that they have some sense, some idea of what's going on, and no one has any idea what's going on.

Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.

But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

Today's today. Tomorrow we may be ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

The more I see, the less I know.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from it. Today is the only day there is.

Consciousness is the grave of things, the place where they cease to exist, beyond which they end. And when they have ended, it seems that they no longer have any essential existence except in the visions in me.

What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true wisdom.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

I have thousands of opinions still - but that is down from millions - and, as always, I know nothing.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.