Significant sentences from HL Mencken's Minority Report, acerbic thoughts on American life and culture.
"Human beings never welcome the news that something they have long cherished is untrue; they almost always reply to that news by reviling its promulgator." p. 65.
"All of us, to be sure, cherish delusions...." p. 67.
"It was not until skepticism arose in the world that genuine intelligence dawned." p. 67.
"People soon find by experience that the ecstasy of sex, like any other powerful emotion, is self-limiting, and that after it has passed off they are substantially unchanged." p. 68.
"The average clergyman is a kind of intellectual eunuch comparable to a pedagogue, a Rotarian or an editorial writer." p. 70.
"...the average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spend it." p. 70.
"The relativity of moral ideas is proved anew every time there is a war." p. 72.
"Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy." p. 76.
"There are Englishmen, of course, who pretend to friendliness for the United States, but it always turns out on brief investigation, that they are trying to sell something. p. 76.
"The only cure for contempt is countercontempt." p. 77.
"Every rebel believes that he is bringing in a new day that will last." p. 78.
"Can the United States ever become genuinely civilized?" p. 81.
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