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Frases de Henry Louis Mencken
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Henry Louis Mencken fue un periodista, editor y crítico social, conocido como el "Sabio de Baltimore". Es considerado uno de los escritores más influyentes de los Estados Unidos de la primera mitad del siglo XX.[1]​ Wikipedia  

✵ 12. septiembre 1880 – 29. enero 1956
Henry Louis Mencken Foto
Henry Louis Mencken: 320 citas53 Me gusta

Frases célebres de Henry Louis Mencken

“En resumen: 1) El cosmos es una rueda de la fortuna gigante dando 10 000 revoluciones por minuto. 2) El hombre es una mosca mareada dando un paseo en esa rueda. 3) La religión es la teoría de que la rueda fue diseñada y puesta en marcha para darle el paseo.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Es imposible imaginar el universo manejado por un sabio, justo y omnipotente Dios, pero es muy fácil imaginarlo administrado por un consejo de dioses. Si ese consejo en verdad existe, opera precisamente como el consejo de una corporación que está perdiendo dinero.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Frases de hombres de Henry Louis Mencken

“Cae la cabeza del rey, y la tiranía se vuelve libertad. El cambio parece abismal. Luego, pedazo a pedazo, la cara de la libertad se endurece, y poco a poco se vuelve la misma vieja cara de la tiranía. Después, otro ciclo, y luego otro más. Pero bajo el juego de todos estos opuestos hay algo fundamental y permanente: la ilusión básica de que el hombre puede ser gobernado y al mismo tiempo ser libre.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“El hombre se hace civilizado no en proporción a su disposición para creer, sino en proporción a su facilidad para dudar.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Todo gobierno es, en su esencia, una conspiración contra el hombre superior: su único objetivo permanente es oprimirlo y malograrlo. Si es aristocrático en organización, entonces busca proteger al hombre que es superior ante la ley contra el hombre que es superior ante los hechos; si es democrático, entonces busca proteger al hombre que es inferior en todo contra ambos. Una de sus funciones primarias es regir a los hombres por la fuerza, para hacerlos tan iguales como sea posible y tan dependientes uno del otro como sea posible, para buscar y combatir la originalidad entre ellos. Todo lo que puede ver en una idea original es un cambio potencial, y por tanto una invasión a sus prerrogativas. El hombre más peligroso para cualquier gobierno es el hombre que tiene la habilidad de pensar las cosas por si mismo, sin que le importen las supersticiones o tabúes. Casi inevitablemente llega a la conclusión de que el gobierno bajo el cual vive es deshonesto, loco e intolerable, y así, si es un romántico, trata de cambiarlo. E incluso si no lo es, si es muy apto para extender el descontento entre quienes lo son.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken Frases y Citas

“Qué es una campaña política sino un esfuerzo concentrado para quitar a un grupo de políticos que son malos, y poner a otros que se cree que son mejores. La primer conclusión, creo que siempre es atinada; la segunda, es ciertamente falsa. Porque, si la experiencia nos enseña algo, es esto: que un buen político, en la democracia, es tan impensable como un ladrón honesto.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Un idealista es alguien que, notando que las rosas huelen mejor que las coles, concluye que también harían mejor sopa.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Teología: esfuerzo de explicar lo que no se sabe, poniendolo en términos de no “ser digno” de saber.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Definiciones

“Confianza: el sentimiento de poder creer a una persona, incluso cuando sabemos que en su lugar nosotros también mentiríamos.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Definiciones

“A una persona naturalmente confiada le lleva bastante tiempo reconciliarse con la idea de que, después de todo, Dios no lo ayudará.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Cuando 'A' molesta o hiere a 'B' con el pretexto de salvar o mejorar 'X', 'A' es un sinvergüenza.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“El New Deal empezó —como el ejército de Salvación— prometiendo la salvación de la humanidad. Pero terminó —como el ejército de Salvación— abriendo tiendas de compra y venta y perturbando la paz.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Es completamente lícito para una católica evitar el embarazo recurriendo a las matemáticas, aunque todavía está prohibido recurrir a la física o a la química.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“La naturaleza aborrece a un tonto.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Los solteros saben más acerca de las mujeres que los casados; si no fuese así, ellos también lo estarían.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Verdad: Algo que de alguna manera desacredita a alguien.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Definiciones

“Jurado — Un grupo de doce personas quienes, habiendo mentido al juez respecto a su oído, salud y compromisos laborales, han fallado en engañarlo.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Riqueza — Cualquier salario que sea por lo menos $100 dólares más al año que el salario del marido de la hermana de nuestra esposa.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“El hecho básico de la existencia humana es, no una tragedia, sino un aburrimiento. No es tanto una guerra más que un esperar en una fila de personas. La objeción hacia ella no es que sea predominantemente dolorosa sino que carece de sentido.”

Henry Louis Mencken

“Juez: Un estudiante de leyes que corrige sus propios exámenes… y Jurado: Un grupo de doce personas quienes, habiendo mentido al juez respecto a su oído, salud y compromisos laborales, han fallado en engañarlo.”

Henry Louis Mencken

Definiciones

Henry Louis Mencken: Frases en inglés

“Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.”

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H.L. Mencken

412
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

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H.L. Mencken

33
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

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H.L. Mencken

Des MacHale, Wit, Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City (KS), 2003, ISBN 978-0-7407-3330-7, page 197 https://books.google.ca/books?id=Dhlgd_Af1C4C&amp;pg=PA197 <br class="br">Misattributed

“Sunday — A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths.”

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H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“The allurement that [women] hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.”

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H.L. Mencken

&quot;The Incomparable Buzzsaw&quot;, The Smart Set, May 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&amp;q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&amp;pg=PA54#v=onepage; later published in Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=0-A4AQAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22The+allurement+that+they+hold+out+to+men+is+precisely+the+allurement+that+Cape+Hatteras+holds+out+to+sailors+they+are+enormously+dangerous+and+hence+enormously+fascinating%22&amp;pg=PA236#v=onepage (1920) <br class="br">1910s

“Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.”

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H.L. Mencken

298
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I was wise to quit writing for the Sun back in January, 1941, for it was obvious by then that Roosevelt would horn into the war soon or late, and I knew by bitter experience in the last war that I'd be throttled at once. Since then I have thought out many likely articles, but not one of them has been printable. In these days, indeed, my very vocabulary is prohibited. I couldn't so much as mention Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the other frauds without having to face a savage official onslaught, with all blows directed below the belt. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 1, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.”

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H.L. Mencken

Fuente: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3

“Though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

“Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”

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H.L. Mencken

As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 48 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&amp;lpg=PP1&amp;client=safari&amp;pg=PA48#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false <br class="br">1940s–present

“Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.”

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H.L. Mencken libro The American Language

The American Language (1919)

“Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.”

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H.L. Mencken

October 24, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“The Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man."… The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when "he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and brought them to support a necessary war on a scale never before imagined." In other words, his greatest fraud was his greatest glory, and his sufficient excuse for all his other frauds. It seems to me to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history -- maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln… He had every quality that morons esteem in their heros. It will be to the interest of all his heirs and assigns to whoop him up, and they will probably succeed in swamping his critics.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 13, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”

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H.L. Mencken

71
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”

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H.L. Mencken libro The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908/1913)
1900s

“Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to describe the best as the common enemy of all decent citizens. But there will be small hope of gaining adherents to this idea so long as government is thought of as an independent and somehow super-human organism, with powers, rights, and privileges transcending those of any other human aggregation.”

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H.L. Mencken

68
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.”

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H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun (12 June 1922)
1920s

“[Roosevelt] was always… finding new victims to loot and new followers to reward, flouting common sense, and boldly denying its existence, demonstrating by his anti-logic that two and two made five, promising larger and larger slices of the moon. His career will greatly engage historians, if any good ones ever appear in America, but it will be of even more interest to psychologists. He was the first American to penetrate to the real depths of vulgar stupidity. He never made the mistake of overestimating the intelligence of the American mob. He was its unparalleled professor.”

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H.L. Mencken

April 15, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“To a clergyman lying under a vow of chastity any act of sex is immoral, but his abhorrence of it naturally increases in proportion as it looks safe and is correspondingly tempting. As a prudent man, he is not much disturbed by incitations which carry their obvious and certain penalties; what shakes him is the enticement bare of any probable secular retribution. Ergo, the worst and damndest indulgence is that which goes unwhipped. So he teaches that it is no sin for a woman to bear a child to a drunken and worthless husband, even though she may believe with sound reason that it will be diseased and miserable all its life, but if she resorts to any mechanical or chemical device, however harmless, to prevent its birth, she is doomed by his penology to roast in Hell forever, along with the assassin of orphans and the scoundrel who forgets his Easter duty.”

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H.L. Mencken libro Treatise on the Gods

Treatise on the Gods (1930; 2nd Edition 1946)
1930s

“Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? … it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?”

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H.L. Mencken

On "teachers of English" in "The Schoolmarm's Goal" in The Lower Depths (1925)
1920s

“The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.”

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H.L. Mencken

397
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

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