Facebook share Tweet This Email this
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Related topics: Cynical
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken
Please sign-up for my Free Inspirational Daily Email on the form below.
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting started is
breaking your complex overwhelming tasks
into small manageable tasks,
and starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain
Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
People who work together will win,
whether it be against complex football defenses,
or the problems of modern society.
- Vince Lombardi
Inferiority Complex:
a name for not loving yourself enough.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein
Today... maybe I can take one step
on that profoundly complex path to peace.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It's not a mess.
It's a physical manifestation of
a wonderfully complex ability to
assess and compartmentalize information.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The older I get, the more wisdom I find
in the ancient rule of taking first things first.
A process which often reduces
the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address of January, 17 1961
Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
All progress is precarious, and the solution
of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The secret of success is to find a need and fill it,
to find a hurt and heal it,
to find somebody with a problem
and offer to help solve it.
- Robert H. Schuller
When I am working on a problem,
I never think about beauty,
but when I have finished,
if the solution is not beautiful,
I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
If the problem can be solved,
there is no use worrying about it.
If it can't be solved,
worrying will do no good.
- Tibetan proverb
The difference between what we do
and what we are capable of doing
would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The problem with making assumptions
is that we believe they are the truth
- don Miguel Ruiz
The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung
If we don't see a failure as a challenge to modify our approach,
but rather as a problem with ourselves, as a personality defect,
we will immediately feel overwhelmed.
- Anthony Robbins
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today;
it is rather the vital necessity of action today
to ensure our strength tomorrow.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You can never solve a problem on the level
on which it was created.
- Albert Einstein
The first step towards the solution
of any problem is optimism.
- John Baines
Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.
If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
- Norman Vincent Peale
No problem can be solved from the same level
of consciousness that created it.
- Albert Einstein
Problem: attitude.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid
We cannot solve a problem by saying,
"It's not my problem."
We cannot solve a problem by hoping that
someone else will solve it for us.
I can solve a problem only when I say,
"This is my problem and it's up to me to solve it.
- M. Scott Peck
If your only tool is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow
Resistance creates suffering.
Stress happens when your mind resists what is.
The only problem in your life
is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
- Dan Millman
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy
If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow
No problem is so formidable that
you can't walk away from it.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
The whole problem with the world is that
fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell
One of the greatest titles we can have is "old friend."
We never appreciate how important old friends are until we are older.
The problem is we need to start our old friendships when we are young.
We then have to nurture and grow those friendships over our middle age
when a busy life and changing geographies
can cause us to neglect those friends.
Today is the day to invest in those people
we hope will call us "old friend" in the years to come.
- Grant Fairley
Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
- Art Buchwald
Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law.
It's nine-tenths of the problem.
- John Lennon
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche
that must have been left behind in the Sixties,
that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
- John Lennon
A perfection of means,
and confusion of aims,
seems to be our main problem.
- Albert Einstein
I love my attitude problem.
- Anonymous
Now we have a problem in making our power credible,
and Vietnam is the place.
- John F. Kennedy
I have treated many hundreds of patients.
Among those in the second half of life -
that is to say, over 35 -
there has not been one whose problem in the last resort
was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
- Carl Jung
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:
it is those who know little, and not those who know much,
who so positively assert that this or that problem
will never be solved by science.
- Charles Darwin
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.
It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- Albert Einstein
The problem in defense is
how far you can go without destroying from within
what you are trying to defend from without.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
---------
Thank you for visiting: For every complex problem, by H.L. Mencken.
Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.
You can also search my large collection of Quotes and Sayings.
May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright ©. You may read about our disclaimer, our privacy policy, our copyright policy, terms of use, participation in affiliate programs, and the list of all our websites.