A Quote by H. L. Mencken

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

H. L. Mencken

Quote Topics

Aberration Conformity Human Human Progress Progress

Quote Author

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

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

H. L. Mencken

The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.

Aristotle

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads.

H. L. Mencken

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

Paul Krassner

Capitalism, as practiced, is a financially profitable, non-sustainable aberration in human development.

Paul Hawken

You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.

Dan Simmons

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.

Edmund Hillary

The greatest progress we have made, and the greatest progress we have yet to make, is in the human heart. In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.

William J. Clinton

Night baseball isn't an aberration. What's an aberration is a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908. They tend to think of themselves as a little Williamsburg, a cute little replica of a major league franchise. Give me the Oakland A's, thank you very much. People who do it right.

George Will

There is the story in every man's heart of human progress. I believe every one of us knows that his major job on Earth is to make some contributions, no matter how small, to this inexorable movement of human progress.

King Vidor

All conflicts can be resolved. Wars and conflicts are not inevitable. They are caused by human beings. There are always interests that are furthered by war. Therefore those who have power and influence can also stop them. Peace is a question of will.

Martti Ahtisaari

The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics.

Julian Huxley

Kindness is not an illusion and violence is not a rule. The true resting state of human affairs is not represented by a man hacking his neighbor into pieces with a machete. That is a sick aberration. No, the true state of human affairs is life as it ought to be lived.