“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
― A Mencken Chrestomathy
― 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.”
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“Le coup de foudre est la rencontre miraculeuse entre une attente et sa réalisation.”
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“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
― Notes on Democracy
― Notes on Democracy
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― A Mencken Chrestomathy
― A Mencken Chrestomathy
Terpsichore’s 2025 Year in Books
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