H. L. Mencken Quotes About Dignity

• It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Responsibility, Men

• The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

  H. L. Mencken

  Pride, Men, Vanity

• Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Literature, Dignity

• Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

  H. L. Mencken

  Birthday, Lying, History

• Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Christian, Humorous

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 4 (1916)

• I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom... [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Believe, Men

  "Letters of H. L. Mencken". Book edited by Guy J. Forgue, 1961.

• The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Law, Liberty

• The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Ignorance, Origin Of Life

• Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

  H. L. Mencken

  Father, Dignity, Thanksgiving Day

• The worshiper is the father of the gods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Father, Religion, Dignity

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.178, Vintage

• It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Art, Society

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.562, Vintage

• To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ignorance, Giving, Intuition

• I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Want

  Letters of H. L. Mencken edited by Guy J. Forgue (p. xiii)., 1961.

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