门肯 (H.L. Mencken,1880-1956 )

——门肯(H.L. Mencken,1880-1956), 美国散文家、讽刺作家、文化评论家和美国英语学者。

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
在这个世界上,大多数人想要的是安全,而不是自由。

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
在这个世界上,人们看重的不是权利,而是特权。

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
民主只是一个梦: 它应该与世外桃园、圣诞老人和天堂归为一类。

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
男人总是在寻找一个能向其夸夸其谈的人; 女人总是在寻找一个可以把头靠上去的肩膀。

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
男人过得比女人好得多。首先,他们晚婚; 另一方面,他们死得早。

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
婚姻是一种美好的制度,但谁愿意住在这种制度里呢?

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
真正幸福的人只有已婚妇女和单身男子。

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
爱是一种错觉,以为一个女人不同于另一个女人。

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
报纸是一种让无知的人更加无知,让疯狂的人更加疯狂的工具。

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.
现实政治的全部目的是通过无尽的妖怪来威胁人民(因此他们吵嚷着要被带到安全的地方),而这些妖怪都是虚构的。

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
爱情是想象力战胜了理智。

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
批评是一种貌似有理的偏见。

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
金钱的主要价值在于人们生活在一个金钱被高估的世界里。

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
造反并不需要多数人的支持;这只需要几个坚定的领导人和一个健全的事业

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
低等人唯一永恒的情感就是恐惧——对未知、复杂和无法解释的恐惧。他最需要的是安全。

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