“All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters.”
"The Calamity of Appomattox," The American Mercury (September 1930)
1930s
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes

“… In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers…”

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was lauded for his coolness and his captaincy after India clung on for a one-run win over Bangladesh in the World Twenty20, quoted on Indian Express, "India vs Bangladesh: MS Dhoni knew what to do, says Sunil Gavaskar" http://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/india-vs-bangladesh-ms-dhoni-praised-after-1-run-win-against-bangladesh/, March 25, 2016.

“He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.”

Diary (17 June 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (Phoenix, 1997), p. 237
Foreign Secretary
You and Your Research (1986)
Context: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.