I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
Interpretation
True liberty involves personal choice and cannot be imposed on others.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken expresses a profound belief in the concept of liberty while simultaneously recognizing the importance of individual autonomy. He suggests that while he values freedom highly, he acknowledges that enforcing this freedom on others contradicts the very nature of liberty itself, indicating a philosophical stance on the balance between personal beliefs and mutual respect for individual choices.
In practice
In a speech about personal freedom and societal obligations.
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.
When I die I won't go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.
No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.
It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a lifesaver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.
You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.
But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them." Viola: "Thy reason, man?" Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.
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