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

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

Related topics: Cynical Cute Whimsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard

You can't let praise or criticism get to you.
It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.
- John Wooden

Conventional people are roused to fury
by departure from convention,
largely because they regard such departure
as a criticism of themselves.
- Bertrand Russell

An unsolicited suggestion is
undistinguishable from a criticism.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Completion:
It is time for the project to be over.
You submitted the proposal, you painted your house,
you passed-in the term paper.
Whatever praise or criticism you received,
it is now time to move on to your next project.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary.
It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body.
It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
- Winston Churchill

My criticism of most religions is that
they don't allow criticism.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's
most effective criticism until you provoke him.
Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
- Henry David Thoreau

If a child lives with criticism,
he learns to condemn.
...
If a child lives with fear,
he learns to be apprehensive.
...
If a child lives with encouragement,
he learns to be confident.
...
If a child lives with acceptance,
he learns to love.
- Dorothy Law Nolte

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
- Henry David Thoreau

Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear,
and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace.
- Lester B. Pearson

I have a dream that my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is no neutrality.
There is only greater or lesser
awareness of one's bias.
- Phyllis Rose

Indifference and neglect often
do much more damage than outright dislike.
- J. K. Rowling

Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.
- M. Scott Peck

No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi

NO ONE is really different;
each of us is actually a member of the human race.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced,
and today we think this more than ever, and are just as wrong
as all previous ages that thought so.
How often have we not seen the truth condemned!
It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung

For those who do not think,
it is best at least to rearrange
their prejudices once in a while.
- Luther Burbank

Instead of being presented with stereotypes
by age, sex, color, class, or religion,
children must have the opportunity
to learn that within each range,
some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
- Margaret Mead

Everything we say, do, think, and feel
is a product of our personal history
and the collective history of humankind.
Our name for these histories is "prejudice."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Prejudice is a two-edged sword.
Like the steel sort of sword, it's very sharp, very useful,
and very dangerous if not properly mastered.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness.
- Mark Twain

The very ink with which all history
is written is merely fluid prejudice.
- Mark Twain

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery,
I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
- Abraham Lincoln

When our thoughts - which bring actions -
are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white,
we are in a living hell.
That is as real as hell will ever be.
- George Washington Carver

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,
and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things
cannot be acquired by vegetating
in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain

Education is a method whereby
one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
- Laurence J. Peter

Today's acorns grow into the oak trees of thirty years hence.
But what acorns are we sowing today?
Imagine what an acorn-sized bit of prejudice or hatred would grow into.
Imagine what an acorn-sized bit of pollution can become.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am free of prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
- W. C. Fields

In this world, the greatest courage is to drop the mind aside.
The bravest man is who can see the world
without the barrier of the mind, just as it is.
It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful.
There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior -
there are no distinctions.
- Osho

My decision to register women confirms what is already obvious
throughout our society -
that women are now providing
all types of skills in every profession.
The military should be no exception.
- Jimmy Carter

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff that life is made of.
- Benjamin Franklin

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
- Robert A. Heinlein

He who never made a mistake,
never made a discovery.
- Samuel Smiles

Leaders aren't born they are made.
And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.
And that's the price we'll have to pay
to achieve that goal, or any goal.
- Vince Lombardi

When an inner situation is not made conscious,
it appears outside as fate.
- Carl Jung

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority
has made the world better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

Thank you for visiting: Criticism is prejudice made plausible. ... 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