We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of the present moment while questioning the validity of knowledge beyond it.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that the only certainty we have is our existence in the present moment, as everything beyond that is uncertain and potentially misleading. It critiques the value we place on accumulated knowledge and posits that true understanding can only be found in the here and now, highlighting a philosophical inquiry into the nature of existence and perception.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, a facilitator might use this quote to encourage participants to focus on their breath and the present moment.
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.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
We no longer see the world as a single entity. We've moved to cities and we think the economy is what gives us our life, that if the economy is strong we can afford garbage collection and sewage disposal and fresh food and water and electricity. We go through life thinking that money is the key to having whatever we want, without regard to what it does to the rest of the world.
The Cosmos was not made by gods but always was and is eternal fire.
Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.
Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom
Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.
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