Isabelle > Isabelle's Quotes

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.”
― H.L. Mencken

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
― H.L. Mencken

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second series

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”
― H. L. Mencken

“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.”
― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
― H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women

“When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”
― H.L. Mencken

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
― H. L. Mencken

“The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.”
― H.L. Menchken

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”
― H.L. Mencken

“the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.”
― H.L. Mencken

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”
― H. L. Mencken, Heliogabalus

“You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“the greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“Forbid Us Something and That Thing we Desire”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“By God, if women had written stories,
As clerks had within here oratories,
They would have written of men more wickedness
Than all the mark of Adam may redress.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath's Prologue & Tale

“It seems to me that poverty is an eyeglass through which one may see his true friends.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales