H. L. Mencken Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do. Never for an instant harbor a doubt of it.
-
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
-
With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.
-
As much preparation as I had made for the old man Salieri, gestures and so on, the fact is after sitting for hours, your movements are kind of slow.
-
A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.
-
I don't believe in regret.
-
I believe love at first sight is possible. Centuries of literature and art and beauty has been dedicated to that idea, so who am I to argue, even if I've never experienced it?
-
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
-
The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property.
-
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
-
Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.
-
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
-
There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
-
Don't jump on a man unless he is down.
-
Yes, I believe the will is very important. It's how I have succeeded in life.
-
Turns out you have a really fun time if you go to work every day and focus on being silly and funny and happy!
-
I believe a true Hindu in India could never have endorsed the killing of the Mahatma.
-
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
-
I just believe in the goodwill of people, the power of people to do something positive.
-
I think the Cold War works as a great analogy or simile for different kinds of conflict. It's funny, when you look back at it, it's one of the last times that the boundaries were clear. Now, as we see on 'Homeland,' there are no clear boundaries and enemies.
-
We need to be realistic. There is very little we can do now to stop the ice from disappearing from the North Pole in the summer. And we probably cannot prevent the melting of the permafrost and the resulting release of methane. In addition, I fear that we may be too late to help the oceans maintain their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
-
I was born in London and raised in Rome until I was 4. Then we went back to London, where I went to school.
-
Those who seek the divine want to make this world a better place, which first requires that we communicate.
-
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
