You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.


Henry Louis Gates

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People will believe what they want to believe
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Change is not progress
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were i...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
School days are the unhappiest in the whole span if human existence. They are full of dull, unintell...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Old age ain't no place for sissies.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterili...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-c...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to d...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better p...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
At the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight, when he is most gratefully warmed...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
He uses his sources as a drunkard uses lampposts; not to light him upon his way, but to dissimulate ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American gospel tent, who pretends to k...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just afte...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is s...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothi...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN