Thursday 13 #4---13 Quotes from H.L. Mencken.

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13 Quotes by H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) who---in the words of my grandmother---was not a nice man.  He was a genuinely complex person---bigoted and often vicious---but he was also a fierce proto-libertarian and one of the Twentieth Century's great writers. He was definitely the forerunner of contemporary curmudgeons such as P.J. O'Rourke and Christopher Hitchens.  My 13 quotes---gleaned from this convenient page---follow this little excerpt from this biography page (for those not familiar with him or his work). 

Whether the reader agrees with Mencken or finds him infuriatingly coarse and incorrect, all can observe his technique with profit; it is rare in contemporary discourse. The criticisms he poses are nearly the same as those of famous literary expatriates including Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; the injustices (or at least incongruities) are the same ones fought by period Muckraker journalists such as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. However, instead of decrying the "daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly" and calling for reform or improvement, Mencken says he is "entertained" by them. On its face, this approach displays a crass indifference and total lack of compassion; Mencken admitted as much, as it was part of his personal philosophy: a kind of fierce libertarianism inspired by a Nietzscheansocial Darwinist outlook derived from Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, and a "Tory" elitism.

The power of satire comes from the transformation of enemies and villains into a source of entertainment; they are reduced from powerful people to be contended with into farcical creatures deserving of mockery. Black journalist and Mencken contemporary James Weldon Johnson celebrated this technique as a way of fighting racism without stooping to the level of Jim Crow enforcers and the Ku Klux Klan:

Mr. Mencken's favorite method of showing people the truth is to attack falsehood with ridicule. He shatters the walls of foolish pride and prejudice and hypocrisy merely by laughing at them; and he is more effective against them than most writers who hurl heavily loaded shells of protest and imprecation.

What could be more disconcerting and overwhelming to a man posing as everybody's superior than to find that everybody was laughing at his pretensions? Protest would only swell up his self-importance. (quoted from Scruggs, pg. 57)

Mencken, in "On Being an American" called the United States "... incomparably the best show on Earth..."; he clearly took joy in covering religious controversies, political conventions, and unearthing new "quackeries" (among his favorite targets are the BaptistMethodist churches, Christian Science, Chiropractics, and most of all, Puritanism, which he defined as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy"). Although he attacked every President of the United States who served during the years of his career as a writer and critic, from Taft to Truman, Mencken reserved a special ire for his attacks on Woodrow Wilson, whose administration he saw as epitomizing the moralistic, Puritanical impulses of American life. Mencken's snipes at Wilson resulted in Mencken being singled out by the Bureau of Investigation (the predecessor of the FBI) and other law enforcement agencies as a potential subversive during Wilson's administration. (H.L. Mencken; links in original)

I chose my 13 quotes from the 156 listed on this page.

13 QUOTES FROM H.L. MENCKEN   (1880-1956)  [see picture (at educanation.org)]

1.  Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

2. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

3.Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

4. .Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in. 

5.  A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

6.  Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

7.  It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods

8. War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

9.  The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

10.  The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. 

11.The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

12.  It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

13.  The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. 

BN-POLITICS THANKS THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR COMMENTS. 

1. Susie of Susie J ( T13)
2. Sue of Life in the Urban Zoo (T13)
3. Jennieboo of  O So Mo Love   (T13)
4. Candy Minx of Gnostic Minx
5. Lori of Single Parents Unite
6. Tommiea at Tuesday Update
7. Shiloh at Shiloh Walker
8. Joely at Dreaming in Rhyme
9. Susan Helene Gottfried at West of Mars
10. Puss Reboots at Puss Reboots
11. Malcolm at Pop Culture Dish
12. Nicholas at A Gentleman's Domain
13. Missy of Observations from Missy's Window
14. Suprina at Kitchen Table Chat
15. Ann at Fractured Fiction
16. Crimson Wife at Bending the Twigs
17. JHSesq at Colloquium
18. Dragon Heart at Dragon Heart's Domain
19. Maiylah at Picture Clusters
20. Mark Caldwell at Too Many Ideas
21. Busy of Busy's Daily Photos and Memes
22. Lazy Daisy of Lazy Daisy Log
23. Tink of Tinkerbell
24. Nancy at Live Love Read
25. Susan B. at Hunting High and Low
26. QTpie at Our Seven Qtpies
27. Gattina of Writer Cramps
28. TeaMouse at Tea Time Ramblings
29. Amy Ruttan at Ramblings of a Historical Romance Writer
30. Jill at Live Your Life and Smile
31. Gabriella Hewitt of Gabriella Hewitt
32. Bernie at Planck's Constant
33. Nicole Austin at Nicole Austin, Romance Author
34. Hestia at Home and Hearth (and Work and School)
35. J. Lynne at D3.
36. Lara at Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing.
37. Elle Fredrix at Elle Fredrix, Contemporary Romance Writer.
38. Shannon at Chicken's Life.
39. Terra at Terra Satirize.
40. L-Squared at Dog's Eye View.

Comments

[SusieJ]

7 and 5 are my favorites.

[Sue]

Great idea for a TT ... :) #1 is rather amusing!

[JennieBoo]

Interesting list.

Thanks for sharing.

Happy TT!

[Candy Minx]

I love Mencken...he is someone I am fairly familiar with...and he has bipartisan fans doesn't he? Which is unusual no?

Terrific fun and humbling list of quotes...he really holds up over time!!!

Here is mine, but you've already been by...

http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com/2007/08/worst-album-covers.html

[Lori]

Sounds like a smart man:) Happy TT.

[tommiea]

the first one sounds like my house with two toddlers!

thanks for visiting my TT.

[Shiloh]

;o) This reminded me why politics make my head hurt.

[Joely]

Very interesting--I don't think I've ever heard of Mencken before. Thanks for sharing!

[Susan Helene Gottfried]

Interesting stuff. Definitely something to think about, dwell on, and reach a conclusion about -- in a few days, if not weeks.

Thanks for broadening my mind tonight. And for visiting, too, of course!

[pussreboots]

Interesting choice for a TT.

[Malcolm]

This was a very enjoyable TT... I esp. liked quotes 1 and 5.

[Nicholas]

All very true, especially 6.

[Missy]

Hmmm... interesting. I think I agree with about 50% of those, maybe. Great idea for a TT. Thanks for sharing.

[Suprina]

Great Thursday TT!

[Ann]

8 & 10 are my favorites. Very interesting list.

[Crimson Wife]

Mencken can be very witty at times but I personally don't much care for him, particularly his attitude towards Christianity. I feel the same way about certain contemporary comics like Bill Maher and Penn Jillette. One can be funny without mocking others' deeply held beliefs.

[JHSEsq]

#12 and 13 are my favorites and the most true, IMHO.

[Dragonheart]

Interesting list! I had never heard of him before. He definitely spoke his mind and didn't worry about offending people!

I have to agree with #5 though. Newspapers report things that are just plain wrong incredibly often.

[Dragonheart]

Interesting list! I had never heard of him before. He definitely spoke his mind and didn't worry about offending people!

I have to agree with #5 though. Newspapers report things that are just plain wrong incredibly often.

[maiylah]

have to agree with #13!
interesting list!

[Mark Caldwell]

I'd throw in Churchill's famous quote on democracy if it hadn't been overused so much.

Interesting list :-)

[busy]

Pretty interesting quotes. I like #4. Happy TT!

[Lazy Daisy]

Wow, these are great. Love your choices.

[Lazy Daisy]

Wow, these are great. Love your choices.

[Lazy Daisy]

Wow, these are great. Love your choices.