Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that one should not assume that humans are inherently good or decent.
H. L. Mencken's quote serves as a caution against naively believing that humanity is fundamentally virtuous. It implies that while many people may exhibit kindness and morality, there is also a significant capacity for selfishness and immorality, urging a more realistic and sometimes skeptical view of human nature.
In practice
In a discussion about human behavior in sociology class.
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.
The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other-that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister. If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we would still need tanks and generals?
Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
If you try to create a type, you may end with nothing. If you do a good job of creating an individual, you may succeed at creating a type.
The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.
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