H. L. Mencken Quotes

I think for one thing, kids are a lot smarter now then we ever were.

The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.

The Goal of Education is to Help People Use Their Minds Better

Some people are faster than others; I'm just figuring it out later, that's all. I'm getting smart too late and old too soon.

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

I tested in the top percentile for IQ, but I couldn't tie my shoes or really ride a bike without training wheels until I was almost 7.

When the conscious mind expands to embrace deeper levels of thinking, the thought wave becomes more powerful and results in added energy and intelligence.

Education must lead us from the irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgment. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. Therefore, let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work.

Teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human beings. It is, I think, a magical time - when so much has been learned, but not yet enough to entirely extinguish the magical reach and freedom of early childhood.

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

I was indeed very slow as a youngster.

We only half live when we only half think

I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man's scientific and philosophical development.

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

The last six years afforded me much time and food for thought. I came to the conclusion that the human race is not divided into two opposing camps of good and evil. It is made up of those who are capable of learning and those who are incapable of doing so.

If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without knowing or feeling it, this apparent barren affort has brought more light into the soul.

Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things.

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.

An ignorant man ages like an ox. His flesh may increase, but not his understanding.

The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.

Physical growth is a function of time. No two-year-old child has ever been six feet tall. Intellectual growth is a function of learning. Spiritual growth is neither a function of time or learning, but it is a function of obedience.