H. L. Mencken

Quotes

• “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing ...”
• “Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's sp...”
• “Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator and not infrequently they actual...”
• “The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is fav...”
• “It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world or to ladle out its normal ...”
• “No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has...”
• “For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit...”
• “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacin...”
• “Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a...”
• “It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taki...”
• “The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatic...”
• “Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - ...”
• “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House ...”
• “To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia: To mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an...”
• “The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he want...”
• “The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear-fear of the unknown the complex the inexplicable. What he wants ...”
• “Unionism seldom if ever uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of tha...”
• “The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds h...”
• “If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost forgive some sinner and wink you...”
• “One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to he...”
• “It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run ...”
• “No matter how happily a woman may be married it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she ...”
• “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Repub...”
• “Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless calmly licking its c...”
• “Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of ...”
• “Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experie...”
• “The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work stretch out in the sun and scratch himse...”
• “Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing they marry later. For another thing they die earlier.”
• “Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.”
• “It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.”
• “War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.”
• “Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.”
• “Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.”
• “Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99% of them are wrong.”
• “A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.”
• “Men are the only animals that devote themselves day in and day out to making one another unhappy.”
• “I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”
• “A Puritan is a person who lives in the fear that someone somewhere may be having a good time.”
• “The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore.”
• “A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with - even if he drank.”
• “Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.”
• “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
• “Opera in English is in the main just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.”
• “It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”
• “Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.”
• “I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”
• “A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”
• “We are here and it is now. Further than that all knowledge is moonshine.”
• “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
• “A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.”