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For every complex problem,
by H.L. Mencken

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken

Related topics: Cynical

We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken

Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken

Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken

The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken

Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken

Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken

The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken

The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken

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,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken

People who work together will win,
whether it be against complex football defenses,
or the problems of modern society.
- Vince Lombardi

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting started is
breaking your complex overwhelming tasks
into small manageable tasks,
and starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein

Inferiority Complex:
a name for not loving yourself enough.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today... maybe I can take one step
on that profoundly complex path to peace.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It's not a mess.
It's a physical manifestation of
a wonderfully complex ability to
assess and compartmentalize information.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The older I get, the more wisdom I find
in the ancient rule of taking first things first.
A process which often reduces
the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address of January, 17 1961

Problem: attitude.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today;
it is rather the vital necessity of action today
to ensure our strength tomorrow.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The problem with making assumptions
is that we believe they are the truth
- don Miguel Ruiz

The difference between what we do
and what we are capable of doing
would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The secret of success is to find a need and fill it,
to find a hurt and heal it,
to find somebody with a problem
and offer to help solve it.
- Robert H. Schuller

If we don't see a failure as a challenge to modify our approach,
but rather as a problem with ourselves, as a personality defect,
we will immediately feel overwhelmed.
- Anthony Robbins

All progress is precarious, and the solution
of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung

No problem can be solved from the same level
of consciousness that created it.
- Albert Einstein

You can never solve a problem on the level
on which it was created.
- Albert Einstein

When I am working on a problem,
I never think about beauty,
but when I have finished,
if the solution is not beautiful,
I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.
If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
- Norman Vincent Peale

The first step towards the solution
of any problem is optimism.
- John Baines

If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow

We cannot solve a problem by saying,
"It's not my problem."
We cannot solve a problem by hoping that
someone else will solve it for us.
I can solve a problem only when I say,
"This is my problem and it's up to me to solve it.
- M. Scott Peck

Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy

If the problem can be solved,
there is no use worrying about it.
If it can't be solved,
worrying will do no good.
- Tibetan proverb

Resistance creates suffering.
Stress happens when your mind resists what is.
The only problem in your life
is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
- Dan Millman

If your only tool is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche
that must have been left behind in the Sixties,
that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
- John Lennon

A perfection of means,
and confusion of aims,
seems to be our main problem.
- Albert Einstein

No problem is so formidable that
you can't walk away from it.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts

I have treated many hundreds of patients.
Among those in the second half of life -
that is to say, over 35 -
there has not been one whose problem in the last resort
was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
- Carl Jung

One of the greatest titles we can have is "old friend."
We never appreciate how important old friends are until we are older.
The problem is we need to start our old friendships when we are young.
We then have to nurture and grow those friendships over our middle age
when a busy life and changing geographies
can cause us to neglect those friends.
Today is the day to invest in those people
we hope will call us "old friend" in the years to come.
- Grant Fairley

You have to realize: OK, I don't know how
to solve a political problem,
I don't know how to solve the pollution problem...
all I know is in my own life,
I need to figure out some sense of purpose,
I need to figure out how to be happy...
and I'm willing.
- Jewel

We may not always be aware of it, but we all create
and repeat affirmations constantly.
The problem is, we typically don't pay attention
to exactly what those affirmations are saying.
Often we go through the day giving ourselves
all sorts of contradictory, or even negative messages.
We may project confidence to the world around us,
while our inner dialogue says...
I hope this works.
I am so nervous about this.
I hope I don't blow it.
Affirmations are self fulfilling prophecies.
If we say, This is never going to work
... then chances are excellent it never will.
- John Assaraf

The problem in defense is
how far you can go without destroying from within
what you are trying to defend from without.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law.
It's nine-tenths of the problem.
- John Lennon

Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
- Art Buchwald

I love my attitude problem.
- Anonymous

The whole problem with the world is that
fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell

Now we have a problem in making our power credible,
and Vietnam is the place.
- John F. Kennedy

Thank you for visiting: For every complex problem, by H.L. Mencken.

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie