Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
Interpretation
Mencken expresses disdain for individuals whose professions rely on speech, suggesting they often prioritize rhetoric over truth.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken critiques various professions that depend on verbal communication, such as actors, clergymen, and politicians. He argues that these individuals, driven by the allure of their own voice and external validation, often stray from factual discourse and instead indulge in mere rhetoric, which can lead to manipulative or superficial communication. Mencken's reflection prompts a deeper exploration of how language can be used as a tool for both truth and deception.
In practice
During a seminar about effective communication, one might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of rhetoric over factual discussion.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
There was a time when she had indulged in the hypothetical for hours a day, plotting the map that had led her here. But no life is a line, and hers was an uneven orbit around a dark star, a moth circling a dead bulb, searching for the light it once held.
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.
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