Facebook share Tweet This Email this
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
Get a Funny Quote of the Day each day by email or in your feed reader.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
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.
- H. L. Mencken
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt
towards people whom we personally dislike.
- Oscar Wilde
Force always attracts men of low morality.
- Albert Einstein
Morality which depends upon the helplessness
of a man or woman has not much to recommend it.
Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
We are finally driven to monogamy
not by morality but by exhaustion.
- Erica Jong
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION FEBRUARY 1, 1933
The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty
to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation.
It will preserve and defend those basic principles
on which our nation has been built.
It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality,
and the family as the basis of national life....
- Adolf Hitler
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
- Thomas Jefferson
Compassion is the basis of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good,
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Morality is of the highest importance -
but for us, not for God.
- Albert Einstein
Morality is the basis of things
and truth is the substance of all morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Morality is contraband in war.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.
- Albert Schweitzer
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal
to reason and is in conflict with morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
To say that authority, whether secular or religious,
supplies no ground for morality
is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
- Joseph Addison
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson
If the Great Way perishes, there will be morality and duty.
When cleverness and knowledge arise, great lies will flourish.
When relatives fall out with one another,
there will be filial duty and love.
When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.
- Lao Tzu
The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley
If the facts don't fit the theory,
change the facts.
- Albert Einstein
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is.
- Yogi Berra
The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have this theory - that if we're told we're bad,
then that's the only ideal we'll ever have.
- Jewel
He who loves practice without theory
is like the sailor who boards ship
without a rudder and compass
and never knows where he may cast.
- Leonardo da Vinci
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream,
the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter,
than the gloom of despair.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have just got a new theory of eternity.
- Albert Einstein
There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory
than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory
in which it lives on as a limiting case.
- Albert Einstein
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
- Henry David Thoreau
The most difficult thing in the world
is to know how to do a thing
and to watch somebody else doing it wrong,
without comment.
- Theodore. H. White
I'm not used to feeling so human.
Is it always like this?
- Edward, from Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
Two things are infinite:
the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not sure about the universe.
- Albert Einstein
Human salvation lies in the hands
of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
Human beings must have action;
and they will make it if they cannot find it.
- Albert Einstein
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
- Walter Bagehot
Science may have found a cure for most evils;
but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -
the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller
Human beings are the only creatures on the planet
who tell time and think they have to earn a living.
- Buckminster Fuller
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another
and I know there are people in the world
that do not love their fellow human beings
and I HATE people like that.
- Tom Lehrer
Man's nature is not essentially evil.
Brute nature has been known to
yield to the influence of love.
You must never despair of human nature.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The natural cause of the human mind
is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
- Thomas Jefferson
The end of the human race will be that
it will eventually die of civilization.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thank you for visiting: Morality is the theory that every human act by H. L. Mencken.
Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.
You can also search my large collection of Funny Quotes.
May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.