It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.
Henry Louis Gates
Related Africa! Africa! Africa! Africa my motherland! Africa, your people cries for you! Afr... LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Let him who walks in darkness and no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God PEOPLE OF CHRIST This is a great continent. I went to primary school on this continent, secondary school, university.... DAMBISA MOYO In a democracy there are only two types of power: there's organized people and organized money, ... BENJAMIN TODD JEALOUS The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature th... CHINUA ACHEBE The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' Acc... JOHN HENRIK CLARKE Africans are on the front lines of humanitarian efforts, distributing life-saving aid in dangerous e... JOHN PRENDERGAST Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved to find certain things stimulating, and as ... TOM CHATFIELD When people say that L.A. doesn't have a culture, I think it really does: a very old culture, an... FRED ARMISEN 1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began l... KURT VONNEGUT I think it's incredible because there were guys like Mays and Mantle and Henry Aaron who were gr... SANDY KOUFAX Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison wit... HAILE SELASSIE We've reached a very low-level equilibrium where it's not clear whose interest it is in to d... DAMBISA MOYO I think most people have creative ideas and have very strange, unorthodox impulses of things that th... VIK MUNIZ I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these citie... ZAHA HADID Africa is a huge continent; it would take several lifetimes of thousands of researchers testing in h... T.K. NALIAKA I represent my country, but I also represent the continent of Africa when I play in Europe. That'... YAYA TOURE In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such ... TASLIMA NASRIN When I'm around black or white people, I'm always in the middle. Especially when I am around... KARYN PARSONS I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious p... GREG GRAFFIN Africa's agricultural sector has enormous scope for development, which would benefit both the co... RICHARD ATTIAS Humans have been evolving for millions of years longer in Africa than in Europe, and even anatomical... JARED DIAMOND When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and ... DJIMON HOUNSOU The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. ROBERT MUGABE Before this country came on the scene, for thousands of years people did things the same way. Within... BEN CARSON I don't know what it is about these post-apocalyptic movies where it's like... people really... JOSEPH DAVID-JONES ...I was there when we opened the gates. Some of these poor wretches running out were so emaciated t... MARCUS BROTHERTON The things sane societies loved, it hated. The things sane societies hated, it loved; the things san... ALICE LUCY TRENT From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyer... NELSON MANDELA I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES White sharks and tuna travel for thousands of miles before returning to the same hot spot just as sa... BARBARA BLOCK Puerto Rican culture is very lively; very lively people; very warm people; and the food is really gr... DAVID LAMBERT There's something very fishy there. We had people before our committee who were well trained in the ... BERNARD SANDERS Two-thirds of what we call New Orleans culture is really myth-making, ... People feed myths of the c... ANDREI CODRESCU It's been argued that of all the animals humans have domesticated, the horse is the most importa... ELTON GALLEGLY The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmaker... MIKHAIL STRABO My fiancee's brother-in-law was recently paralysed in an accident and it really brought home the... GARY LINEKER It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke E... ABBEY LINCOLN I'm doing a lot of things in Africa. I've formed a company with two friends of mine called M... OZWALD BOATENG Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we... AVA DUVERNAY Almost overnight, white people have gone from being very powerful to potentially irrelevant. Their f... DAMON GALGUT Lemons. He liked lemons. They made you make funny faces when you bit them, and a very, very long way... NICK HARKAWAY Adam, Grant and Tory have worked at ILM for some years. I worked there on one job with Grant and we ... JAMIE HYNEMAN It's not about superheroes. This is the method of universal storytelling that all people have...... PATTY JENKINS I just want to say what a tremendous honor it is to be on a show like 'The Newsroom.' I'... TERRY CREWS Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guer... FERNANDO BOTERO It's not just Ethiopia, but Africa in general - most of the media concentrates on what's not... LIYA KEBEDE It's particularly important for us because our history was lost when we were taken from the continen... GINA PAIGE Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind.... GAUTAMA BUDDHA We believe it is comprehensive international sanctions against the white regime that will save us fr... OLIVER TAMBO There were no gates, no lights, no bells, no stop signs to warn of an oncoming train, ... One month ... RYAN MOORE My thinking is that if we're going to take from a culture, let's take from a culture that ha... BUSTA RHYMES For some of these programs, thousands of people audition and they only choose a couple hundred to go... HEATHER RAUE I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this sit... LIZZY CAPLAN I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justi... HENRY LOUIS GATES We were raised very colour blind. I had gone to school and to camp for so long with white people, I ... ILYASAH SHABAZZ Yidaki didgeridoo has been used in every part of Australian regional culture, all around the country... XAVIER RUDD I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's o... SUZY MENKES People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me fo... JAMES BALDWIN Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us... BONO I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds with... CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS When one deals with stars, he is dealing with intelligent people. If they weren't intelligent, t... GEORGE CUKOR I was 25 years old when I arrived in D.C. It was just myself and two people who worked and helped me... DANIEL BOULUD We're more interested in someone writing a really great answer that's going to be read by th... ADAM D'ANGELO It's been amazing getting to go from city to city and perform for thousands of people. It's ... AUSTIN MAHONE Like its agriculture, Africa's markets are highly under-capitalized and inefficient. We know fro... ELENI ZAUDE GABRE-MADHIN Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life... JEFF KOONS It takes two years on the stage for an actor or an actress to learn how to speak correctly and to ma... D. W. GRIFFITH That's Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental librar... AL JARREAU The Native American cultures on this continent, most of them, were matrilineal, and some women were ... GLORIA STEINEM 'Interview' created indelible images of Pop Art that arrived on people's doorsteps every... RICHARD PHILLIPS The history of screenwriting - of what we do - is more than 100 years old. It's thousands of yea... JOHN LOGAN In the NBA, as in nowhere else in America, white people are utterly beholden to black people, and th... DAVID SHIELDS A beautiful and important film about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It will eng... NELSON MANDELA I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It c... BELA FLECK It's important to not marginalize any people group in fiction. A complete, authentic-feeling wor... RAE CARSON This is important to parents. There's never been a spotlight on this, and that's a mistake. I think ... ARNE DUNCAN I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and por... ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH [He] stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent ... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN Some white people hate black people, and some white people love black people, some black people hate... EDEN AHBEZ It's always humbling, knowing where we came from. From being friends with the janitor in the bar... ZAC BROWN In the early eighties, there were a lot of artists involved with the music scene. All those young ar... KIM GORDON When you spend seven years with a group of people and suddenly you're not together, it's ver... POPPY MONTGOMERY Poverty is not the simple result of bad geography, bad culture, bad history. It's the result of ... ADAM DAVIDSON Before my first child was born, I had nothing going on professionally really, and it's been a ve... SETH GABEL Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not... WILLIAM FEATHER Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not... WILLIAM FEATHER I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of ... JOHNNY DEPP When I heard all these people -- the thousands of people -- shout my name, it was the most beautiful... KOSTAS KENTERIS I found the idea of being a librarian very appealing--working in a place where people had to whisper... PETER CAMERON Rock n' roll means so much more to people; it enriches the culture. Also, it inspires people; th... MICK JONES The Heartland Institute, which people mostly only know in terms of the fact that it hosts these annu... NAOMI KLEIN Before a game, you know, I can take off my helmet, run over there and spend a few moments with someo... TIM TEBOW I think it's incredible because there were guys like Mays and Mantle and Henry Aaron who were great ... SANDY KOUFAX Now there are thousands of people with those names that wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for them. T... PAMELA REDMOND SATRAN We've been around for 75 years and over the years we've brought thousands of people to the city for ... DOMINIC MISSIMI When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus pri... RON EGLASH We were walking along with all these thousands of people and we just crossed the Memorial Bridge, JENNIFER HANSON Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the populat... CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG I think there's a culture in Rajasthan Royals that has been there before I got here, so I've... RAHUL DRAVID
More Henry Louis Gates
People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody t... HENRY LOUIS GATES Diversity doesn't mean black and white only. HENRY LOUIS GATES The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make... HENRY LOUIS GATES Brazil is the second blackest nation in the world. HENRY LOUIS GATES So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we... HENRY LOUIS GATES I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ... HENRY LOUIS GATES The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of bla... HENRY LOUIS GATES Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the Uni... HENRY LOUIS GATES In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the ... HENRY LOUIS GATES We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil ri... HENRY LOUIS GATES If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class n... HENRY LOUIS GATES You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it. HENRY LOUIS GATES What people forget is that the most radical thing about Obama is that he was the first black man in ... HENRY LOUIS GATES It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-c... HENRY LOUIS GATES But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some ve... HENRY LOUIS GATES People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a... HENRY LOUIS GATES The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending dis... HENRY LOUIS GATES I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and sca... HENRY LOUIS GATES Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the... HENRY LOUIS GATES Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth - more than any other American President. HENRY LOUIS GATES Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping ot... HENRY LOUIS GATES In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. HENRY LOUIS GATES All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their an... HENRY LOUIS GATES I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten. HENRY LOUIS GATES Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in t... HENRY LOUIS GATES The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European trad... HENRY LOUIS GATES One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black... HENRY LOUIS GATES Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you. HENRY LOUIS GATES My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the ster... HENRY LOUIS GATES My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and ... HENRY LOUIS GATES All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, t... HENRY LOUIS GATES There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the rec... HENRY LOUIS GATES For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately intrigued by 'Africa,' by the word i... HENRY LOUIS GATES I would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity... HENRY LOUIS GATES The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case. HENRY LOUIS GATES Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class wit... HENRY LOUIS GATES We can't all work in the inner city. And, I don't even think that it is incumbent upon an Af... HENRY LOUIS GATES My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent cha... HENRY LOUIS GATES The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early... HENRY LOUIS GATES I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United State... HENRY LOUIS GATES I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identitie... HENRY LOUIS GATES You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ance... HENRY LOUIS GATES So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the pu... HENRY LOUIS GATES Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader w... HENRY LOUIS GATES My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another bl... HENRY LOUIS GATES Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but th... HENRY LOUIS GATES No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the ... HENRY LOUIS GATES I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as ... HENRY LOUIS GATES So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a be... HENRY LOUIS GATES Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult ... HENRY LOUIS GATES Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout rem... HENRY LOUIS GATES I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justi... HENRY LOUIS GATES Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice. HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which h... HENRY LOUIS Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. B... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Adultery is the application of democracy to love HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The cynics are right nine times out of ten. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nic... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The Liberals have many tails, and chase them all HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN If you want peace, work for justice. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will als... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn't, they'd be married too. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Going to school does not make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a ca... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN You can't kiss an oil well. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expe... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch the... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as s... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN All government, of course, is against liberty. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other a... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionarie... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, i... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from ad... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite eas... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN [Rudolph Valentino was] what is commonly called for want of a better name, a gentleman. In brief, Va... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Men are sad because they have to die so soon, women are sad because they were born so long ago. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN An individual who forces himself to accept this or that idea, or who pretends to accept this or that... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scien... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a d... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The fundamentalist mind, running in a single rut for fifty years, is now quite unable to comprehend ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Say what you want about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that th... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN He marries best who puts it off until it is too late HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Theology-An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will n... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a litt... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN When women kiss, it always reminds one of prizefighters shaking hands HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN He (the businessman) is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There is a bird that knows no closed season - and if he won't come down to Texas oil stock, or one-n... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN When women kiss it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every h... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid fo... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Gynecologists: perhaps the most ignorant class of men, when it comes to knowledge of women, in the c... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as ha... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN No normal man ever fell in love after 30 when the kidneys begin to disintegrate. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops the... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN People will believe what they want to believe HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Change is not progress HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were i... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Most people want security in this world, not liberty. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN School days are the unhappiest in the whole span if human existence. They are full of dull, unintell... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Old age ain't no place for sissies. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterili... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-c... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The only really happy folk are married women and single men. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to d... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better p... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN At the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight, when he is most gratefully warmed... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN He uses his sources as a drunkard uses lampposts; not to light him upon his way, but to dissimulate ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American gospel tent, who pretends to k... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just afte... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is s... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothi... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN