Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.
H. L. MenckenUS editor (1880 - 1956)

I've always admired Henry Louis Mencken. Born in Baltimore in 1880, he lived there all of his life - originally destined for business, he became a newspaperman. Advancing quickly to editorial positions at the Baltimore Morning Herald, he was also a columnist, critic, and book reviewer. Outspoken and iconoclastic, he was not merely a critic of his day but also a fervent student of language.

I selected the above quotation, out of hundreds of Mencken's acerbic sentences, as it typifies the kind of pointed statements that aren't found in modern writing anywhere. I'm not talking about the kind of ugly puerile name-calling quickly descending into borderline hate speech I've seen all over the Internets - Mencken doesn't natter on endlessly to make his point, for one, and he doesn't descend to vulgarity either.

It's a short sharp pointed stick that he thrusts right into the eye of the reader. By the time one gets to the end of the sentence, it's impossible to read it without any kind of physical reaction, be it as minor as a raised eyebrow or, more commonly, a gasp of surprise. He didn't just say that, did he?

Guaranteed to raise the hackles every time. I cackle with ill-disguised glee every time I read it. Mencken advocated rock bottom common sense and combined it with a rather irrevocable solution to what he saw as utter irresponsibility. Critics of this quote can certainly point to its less than humanistic qualities - after all, don't most people believe that propogation is a right rather than a responsibility?

Or a privilege?

Draconian measures aside, I think Mencken purposely wrote that, expecting [and probably receiving] any number of passioned outcries of denouncement to which, I like to imagine, he promptly ignored.

But it does make you think, doesn't it? Potential hours of rational, civilized debate found in less than 25 words.