"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable"
- H. L. Mencken
About this Quote
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that a society made up of people who are all capable of independent idea and creativity would be hard to live in. Mencken indicates that such a society would be chaotic and ungovernable, as each individual would be pursuing their own concepts and interests with no regard for the collective. This might cause an absence of cohesion and a lack of progress, as each individual would be focused on their own concepts and not on the collective good. Mencken's quote suggests that a society needs to have a balance in between specific idea and collective action in order to succeed. Without this balance, a society would be unendurable.
This quote is written / told by H. L. Mencken between September 12, 1880 and January 29, 1956. He was a famous Writer from USA.
The author also have 123 other quotes.
"What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process"
"Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space"
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion"
"To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today"
