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H. L. Mencken citations
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Henry Louis Mencken , plus connu sous le nom de H. L. Mencken, est un journaliste, linguiste, satiriste, critique social et un libre penseur, surnommé « le sage de Baltimore » ou encore « le Nietzsche américain ». Il est souvent considéré comme l'un des écrivains américains les plus influents du XXe siècle. À une époque de sa carrière, les Américains l'avaient désigné comme leur plus brillant esprit et critique littéraire hors pair.

Mencken est probablement plus connu aujourd'hui pour son ouvrage The American Language, une étude de plusieurs volumes sur la façon dont l'anglais est parlé aux États-Unis, ainsi que pour son reportage satirique sur le procès Scopes, qu'il appelait le « procès du singe ». Wikipedia  

✵ 12. septembre 1880 – 29. janvier 1956
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H. L. Mencken: 282   citations 0   J'aime

H. L. Mencken Citations

“La convention sociale la plus curieuse de la formidable époque que nous vivons est celle selon laquelle les opinions religieuses doivent être respectées. L'évidence des effets pervers d'une telle idée doit être claire pour tout le monde. Tout ce qu'elle permet, c'est 1) de jeter un voile de sainteté sur ces opinions qui sont une complète violation de la décence intellectuelle, et 2) de transformer tout théologien en libertin patenté. […] En fait il n'y a rien dans les opinions religieuses qui justifie qu'elles dussent bénéficier de plus de respect que les autres. Au contraire elles ont tendance à être remarquablement stupide. […] Non, il n'y a rien de notable ni de digne dans les idées religieuses. Elles aboutissent pour la plupart à un tissu de non-sens particulièrement puéril et assommant.”

H. L. Mencken
idée , monde , Sens

H. L. Mencken: Citations en anglais

“By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...”

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H.L. Mencken

The American Mercury (February 1926)
1920s

“I have seen many theoretical objections to democracy, and sometimes urge them with such heat that it probably goes beyond the bound of sound taste, but I am thoroughly convinced, nonetheless, that the democratic nations are happier than any other. The United States today, indeed, is probably the happiest the world has ever seen. Taxes are high, but they are still well within the means of the taxpayer: he could pay twice as much and still survive. The laws are innumerable and idiotic, but only prisoners in the penitentiaries and persons under religious vows ever obey them. The country is governed by rogues, but there is no general dislike of rogues: on the contrary, they are esteemed and envied. Best of all, the people have the pleasant feeling that they can make improvements at any time they want to—... in other words, they are happy. Democrats are always happy. Democracy is a sort of laughing gas. It will not cure anything, perhaps, but it unquestionably stops the pain.”

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"The Master Illusion" in the The American Mercury (March 1925), p. 319
1920s

“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...”

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"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s

“The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

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H.L. Mencken

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.... Certainly it would be difficult to imagine any committee of relatively young men, of thirty or thirty-five, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the United States. The average age of the learned justices must be well beyond sixty, and all of them are supposed to be of finished and mellowed sagacity. Yet their knowledge of the most ordinary principles of justice often turns out to be extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor.”

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H.L. Mencken

"Advice to Young Men" in Prejudices: Third Series (1922).
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.”

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"Why Liberty?”, in the Chicago Tribune (30 January 1927)
1920s

“My literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in belief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety.”

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H.L. Mencken

Letter to George Müller (1923), Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast, Oxford University Press, (2005) pp. 105-106, first published in Autobiographical Notes, 1941
1920s

“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; 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, most of them imaginary.”

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H.L. Mencken livre In Defense of Women

In Defense of Women (1918)
1910s

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

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H.L. Mencken

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s

“My belief is that every man after fifty-five is always ill more or less.”

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H.L. Mencken

Source: Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994), Chapter 18, Looking Two Ways (p. 426)

“Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)