H. L. Mencken Quotes
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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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 he is taken over by the Devil.
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To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies - the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
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The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances-of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
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God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
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Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
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Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
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Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
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Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
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Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.