A Quote by H. L. Mencken

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

H. L. Mencken

Quote Topics

Average Average Man Does Free Man Safe Simply Want Wants

Quote Author

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

The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

H. L. Mencken

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

Anatole France

A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?

Robert Musil

Everyone wants to be safe. Well, I got news for you: You can't be safe. Life's not safe. Your work isn't safe. When you leave the house, it isn't safe. The air you breathe isn't going to be safe, not for very long. That's why you have to enjoy the moment.

Lemmy

No one else can want for me. No one can substitute his act of will for mine. It does sometimes happen that someone very much wants me to want what he wants. This is the moment when the impassable frontier between him and me, which is drawn by free will, becomes most obvious. I may not want that which he wants me to want - and in this precisely I am incommunicabilis. I am, and I must be, independent in my actions. All human relationships are posited on this fact.

Pope John Paul II

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be ... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson

And here is one choice that our Father wants us to understand as Christians – and I believe this is the choice of our age: Do we want to be brave or safe? Gently, lovingly, our heavenly Father wants us to know that we simply can’t be both.

Gary Haugen

Higgins: I'm an ordinary man, who desires nothing more than just an ordinary chance, to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants. An average man am I, of no eccentric whim, Who likes to live his life, free of strife Doing whatever he thinks is best for him, Well, just an ordinary man

Rex Harrison

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

Flannery O'Connor

Bread sets free; but does not necessarily set free for good ends -- that dear illusion of so many generous hearts. It sets a man free to choose: it often sets free for the bad, but man has a right to that choice and to that evil, without which he is no longer a man.

Francoise Mallet-Joris

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson

What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what all other Americans want. He wants opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them.

Mary McLeod Bethune

The one thing that everybody wants is to be freenot to be managed, threatened, directed, restrained, obliged, fearful, administered, they want none of these things they all want to feel free … The only thing that any one wants now is to be free, to be let alone, to live their life as they can, but not to be watched, controlled and scared, no no, not.

Gertrude Stein

An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse -- and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.

Sam Harris

A man doesn't wasnt to feel that a woman cares more for him than he cares for her. He doesn't want to feel owned, body and soul. It's that damned possessive attitude. This man is mine---he belongs to me! He wants to get away --- to get free. He wants to own his woman; he doesn't want her to own him.(Simon Boyle)