I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
Interpretation
The quote reflects disdain for those who attend lectures without a genuine interest in engagement.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken expresses his aversion to lecturing, suggesting that he finds more value in genuine discourse than in speaking to an audience that may not be interested in meaningful interaction. His dislike of the 'sort of people' who attend lectures without the desire to engage indicates a broader critique of passive learning and the disconnect between speakers and their audience.
In practice
In a speech about public speaking, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of genuine engagement with the audience.
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.
Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].
It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me.
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.
I also feel I'm a positive role model by not putting my education on hold.
There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race.
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