Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights the difficulty of accepting evolutionary ideas about human origins.
H. L. Mencken's quote playfully suggests that it is a challenging concept for people to accept the notion that humans evolved from apes, indicating both a sense of self-importance and the tension that exists when confronting uncomfortable truths about our origins. It reflects on human nature's resistance to change and the difficulties in accepting scientific explanations that challenge longstanding beliefs or ego.
In practice
In a discussion on evolution at a science conference.
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.
Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. Pain in the past is remembered as anger. Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety. Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held within, is called guilt. The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward creates depression.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is.
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.
In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.
Why I oppose the nuclear-arms race: I prefer the human race.
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