H. L. Mencken Quotes

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken

• Believe
• True
• Mankind

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Quotes to Explore

• A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

  

  Walter Lippmann
  • Life
  • Long
  • Space

• American audiences are great. They get what I am doing, but as my band will tell you, nowhere tops the Irish audience. They are just brilliant. They are very open, but the Americans and Spanish come a close second.

  

  Imelda May
  • American
  • Band
  • Brilliant

• Just because I have two world records, everyone assumes that means automatically it is two guaranteed gold medals, but it isn't like that, and anything can happen in a race.

  

  Adam Peaty
  • World
  • Gold
  • Race

• I'm from New York, so I'm not a big driver.

  

  Dan Fogler
  • New
  • New York
  • Driver

• Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Real
  • Love
  • Difficult

• It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

  

  Umberto Eco
  • Attention
  • Question
  • Television

• When you appear on the screen, often enough you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.

  

  Vincent Cassel
  • Look
  • Sexy
  • Elephant

• Everybody likes money. I like money. I need money to survive. But I don't love money. Money is not my god.

  

  Rafael dos Anjos
  • God
  • Money
  • Like

• Oh I've done bungee jumping. Skydiving, I have motorcycles that I ride. I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie in that way.

  

  Zachary Levi
  • Done
  • Way
  • Ride

• The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.

  

  Wassily Kandinsky
  • Man
  • Desire
  • Blue

• A hit film is what we work for as actors, as that goes to show that we have managed to entertain our audiences who shower us with their love and affection throughout the years.

  

  Mahesh Babu
  • Work
  • Actors
  • Affection

• I grew up in Hollywood during WWII, and my mother was afraid that my father was going to be drafted because she didn't think we were going to be able to live on army pay. She didn't want to have to get a job, so she decided to put me to work, and that's how I got started in the movies.

  

  Karolyn Grimes
  • Up
  • Work
  • Live

• It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any.

  

  Mae West
  • Long
  • Laws
  • Now And Then

• Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia.

  

  Nancy Meyers
  • Up
  • Trying
  • Small

• I've never liked categories; I've never liked boxes; I've always tried to be unconventional as much as I possibly could.

  

  Gary Dourdan
  • Always
  • Never
  • Boxes

• When you have the first show set in India on American television, there's gonna be a Nervous Nellie kind of vibe.

  

  Parvesh Cheena
  • American
  • First
  • India

• I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

  

  Manuel Puig
  • Business
  • America
  • Never

• Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Religious
  • Target
  • Radical

• The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings.

  

  Fulton J. Sheen
  • Man
  • Proud
  • Humble

• In the year 1921, I was successful for the first time in obtaining certain proof that by stimulation of the nerves in a frog's heart, substances were released which to some extent passed into the heart fluid and, when transferred with this into a test heart, caused it to react in exactly the same way as the stimulation of the corresponding nerves.

  

  Otto Loewi
  • Time
  • Heart
  • Nerves

• How can you own ... numbers? Numbers belong to the world.

  

  Donald Knuth
  • World

• It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

  

  Lascelles Abercrombie
  • Time
  • Believe
  • Sometimes

• You have to let fear go. Another lesson is you just have to believe in yourself; you just have to. There's no way around it. No matter how things are stacked against you, you just have to every time.

  

  Venus Williams
  • Time
  • Believe
  • Fear

• The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Believe
  • True
  • Mankind