A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
Interpretation
A great nation can be defined by the presence of integrity among its people.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that the moral fabric of a society can be gauged by the existence of individuals who exhibit honesty and integrity. Even if only a few such people emerge over the course of a century, it reflects positively on the nation as a whole and underscores the importance of ethical conduct in the broader context of societal values.
In practice
A keynote speech about the importance of honesty in governance could use this quote.
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.
No matter how many toys we amass we leave them behind when we die, just as we leave a broken environment, an economy that only benefits the richest, and a legacy of empowering greed over goodness. It is now time to commit to following a new path.
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
In the world today, we humans have become more self-absorbed, more tribal and tenacious in holding on to our narrow agendas; we have become consumed by the barrage of information inundating us; we are even more fickle when it comes to leaders.
There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
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