The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the vastness of the universe and humanity's small, chaotic existence within it.
H. L. Mencken's quote compares the universe to a massive, relentless flywheel, emphasizing its immense scale and the rapid, constant motion of life. In this metaphor, humans are depicted as a 'sick fly,' suggesting a sense of disorientation and the uncontrollable nature of our lives as we navigate the complexities of existence amid the vast cosmos.
In practice
In a speech about the complexities of life and the universe, one might say, 'As Mencken wisely put it, the cosmos is like a flywheel, and we are but dizzy flies upon it.'
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.
Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him.
Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.
I feel like I could be likened to an old hound circling on a rug for the last five years.
The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".
When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.
It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is - although we all think that we are.
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