The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man
Interpretation
The progress of science has advanced to a level that feels unattainable for humanity.
H. L. Mencken's quote reflects on the rapid advancement of scientific knowledge and technology over the past century, suggesting that while this progress is remarkable, it has also led to a situation where much of this knowledge feels inaccessible or overwhelming for the average person. This raises questions about how humanity can keep pace with its own achievements and the implications of such advanced knowledge on society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the challenges of scientific education to the general public.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome.
No one trusts a model except the man who wrote it; everyone trusts an observation, except the man who made it.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.
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