The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.
More Quotes from Henry Louis Mencken:
It is a sin to believe evil of others, But it is seldom a mistake.Henry Louis Mencken
No form of liberty is worth a darn sic which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.
Henry Louis Mencken
There are some people who read too much The bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as others are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
Henry Louis Mencken
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
Henry Louis Mencken
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
Henry Louis Mencken
Women hate revolutions and revolutionists. They like men who are docile, and well-regarded at the bank, and never late at meals.
Henry Louis Mencken
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Based on Topics: Desire Quotes, Dogs Quotes, Infinity Quotes, Science Quotes, Secrets Quotes, Service Quotes, World QuotesBased on Keywords: grossly, inaccurate, investigator, liberator, pathological, prototype, samaritan, sniffing, uncover
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