Henry Louis Mencken
AN AMERICAN SATIRIST
Henry Louis Mencken was a legendary American writer, thinker, journalist and social critic. He was considered one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. I first learned about Mencken on my favorite cable news program “Countdown with Keith Olbermann“ on MSNBC, one of the few intelligent and hard working journalists in the US today, .
Mencken was known for his satirical style of writing and his wittingly biting but humorous comments that covered a wide range of topics like marriage, love, war, relationship, church, religion, politics, American culture and American democracy. Here are a few of his memorable quotes in these topics.
On love and war:
“Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop”
On Marriage:
“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.”
On Christianity/religion:
“Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will never get there”
On Voting and Christianity (a twofer-zinger, if you will):
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
On Communism and Christianity (another twofer):
“The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians” (Can I get an Amen? comment mine)
On Evangelicalism:
“Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love” (Can I get another Amen? comment mine)
On relationship and marriage:
“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too.”
On Religion:
“Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth”
On wisdom:
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
On life:
“You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing”
In his essay “Prejudices: Third Series” Mencken writes the following scathing and sarcastic comment regarding what he considered a myth about the US as the “land of opportunity”.
Here the business of getting a living … is enormously easier than it is in any other Christian land-so easy, in fact, that an educated and forehanded man who fails at it must actually make deliberate efforts to that end. Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly-the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances-is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.
But the one statement that introduced me to Mencken and drove me to do more research on him was this timely and poignant quote about the presidency of the US government. Mencken made this statement (a prophecy is more like it) in 1920 some 87 years ago! Even leaving unnecessarily generous room for interpretation for today’s Republicans or Neo-Cons, all I can say is, truer words were never spoken.
- The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
- The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
As Mr Olbermann said himself on his program after reading the above, check please!
Chereka
