Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
Interpretation
The quote critiques those who harm others under the guise of doing good.
H. L. Mencken's quote highlights the hypocrisy in human behavior where individuals justify their harmful actions to others by claiming they are acting for the greater good. It underscores the moral dilemma that arises when intentions are masked by a veneer of altruism, suggesting that such justifications often reveal a lack of integrity in the person taking action.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about ethics in political decisions.
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.
By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent, and what to those we give, to Jove is lent.
That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be.
An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn, Because of her opinionated mind Barter that horn and every good By quiet natures understood For an old bellows full of angry wind?
The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.
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