Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'
More from H. L. Mencken
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
Permalink to quote #88 Do [English Teachers] believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augme…
Permalink to quote #90 The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination…
Permalink to quote #87