ellauri097.html on line 85: Mutta takas Menckeniin. 9-vuotiaana se luki Mark Twainin Huckleberry Finn, mikä oli "the most stupendous event in my life." No taisi olla tylsä elämä. Kylse varmaan luki Twainilta niitä ateistijuttujakin. For Mencken, Huck Finn epitomizes the hilarious dark side of America, where democracy, as defined by Mencken, is "the worship of jackals by jackasses." Siinä se on oikeassa kyllä mutta demokratia on silti paras kexintö. Ilman sitä samat kusipäät ja niiden sakaalit hallizis ilman aaseja. Demokratiassa sentään vaihdetaan aasit ja sakaalit määräaikoina.
ellauri097.html on line 117: Mencken, says Charles A. Fecher, was, "deeply conservative, resentful of change, looking back upon the 'happy days' of a bygone time, wanted no part of the world that the New Deal promised to bring in." In 1931, the Arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray for Mencken´s soul after he had called the state the "apex of moronia."
ellauri097.html on line 149: Mencken repeatedly identified mathematics with metaphysics and theology. According to Mencken, mathematics is necessarily infected with metaphysics because of the tendency of many mathematical people to engage in metaphysical speculation. In a review of Alfred North Whitehead's The Aims of Education, Mencken remarked that, while he agreed with Whitehead's thesis and admired his writing style, "now and then he falls into mathematical jargon and pollutes his discourse with equations," and "[t]here are moments when he seems to be following some of his mathematical colleagues into the gaudy metaphysics which now entertains them."[50] For Mencken, theology is characterized by the fact that it uses correct reasoning from false premises. Mencken also uses the term "theology" more generally, to refer to the use of logic in science or any other field of knowledge. In a review for both Arthur Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World and Joseph Needham's Man a Machine, Mencken ridiculed the use of reasoning to establish any fact in science, because theologians happen to be masters of "logic" and yet are mental defectives:
3