A Quote by H. L. Mencken

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

H. L. Mencken

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Believe Boy Bright Brutal Cares Common Common Decency Common Sense Days Decency Discover Dull Existence Full Him Human Human Existence I Believe Learns Long Most Much New Nonsense Ordinances Really Reasonably School School Days Sense Span Take Tasks Unintelligible Unpleasant Very Violations Whether Whole

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H. L. Mencken
American - Writer
September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.

H. L. Mencken

I'm a practical person. Most fashion people live in the clouds, and they're full of it. I live like a human being - or, I try to - and I have to be intelligent; I have to be practical. I'm a great believer in common sense, and the older I get, I see that common sense is not that common.

Iris Apfel

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken

But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.

Dick Gephardt

…there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.

Albert Camus

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

George Jean Nathan

Whenever a man boasts much about [his common sense], you may be pretty sure that he has very little sense, either common or uncommon.

Henry Thomas Buckle

The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions.

Antony Hewish

The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one's birthright of membership in the great human family.

Arnold J. Toynbee

As you know, in this democracy, in order to have a healthy democracy, we have to get to the common good. But the only way to get to the common good is if we have a common set of facts, which we don't seem to have today, and we have a common level of decency. And my problem with the president and what happened today and why I think it affects the country as a whole is, first, we bring up our kids better than this. We teach them not to do this. We tell them not to do this, and it is not the right standard of behavior.

Matthew Dowd

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Learning how to access a continuity of common sense can be one of your most efficient accomplishments in this decade. Can you imagine "common sense" surpassing science and technology in the quest to unravel the human stress mess? In time, society will have a new measure for confirming truth. It's inside the people-not at the mercy of current scientific methodology. Let scientists facilitate discovery, but not invent your inner truth.

Doc Childre

I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.

Booker T. Washington

Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but makes sense, if not common sense.

Edward Kasner

I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior - out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs - which should not be rewarded. But often it isn't, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of these.

Joe Klein

A Quote by H. L. Mencken

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