H. L. Mencken Quotes

… the third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

I'm asking people to think critically and not to be lazy in their thinking.

Lazy thinking is not creative or productive.

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)

The world so clamors for action that men and women devote little time to thinking. Many believe in secondhand thinking. They find it easier to ascertain and adopt the thoughts of others than to think for themselves.

It is always the task of the intellectual to "think otherwise." This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.

Men seldom think deeply on subjects in which they have no choice of opinion: they are fearful of encountering obstacles to their faith--as in religion--and so are content with the surface.

The great fault of mankind is that it will not think.

So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.

Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think

i'm in a muddle about a lot of things -- i've just discovered that i've a mind, and i'm starting to read" "read what?" "everything. i have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things that make me think.

I realized that, to a large degree, I had kept my rational mind at bay my whole life. I just acted on intuition in terms of how I related to life. At some point, my rational mind started creeping in, and it would not shut up. I finally had to address it and confront it. I think most intelligent people, at a younger age than I have, begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions our society promotes. But me, I just rejected it without even considering it.

There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.

Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their children's minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are.

To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think.

I've always thought comparisons were useless and ugly. It is a short cut to thinking.