H. L. Mencken Quotes

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

• People
• Good
• Democracy

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Quotes to Explore

• I see my daft surname as a positive thing. It first dawned on me that I had a comical name when someone called me 'Fishface' on my first day at school. I've heard all the fish jokes since then, many times over.

  

  Laura Haddock
  • School
  • Day
  • Positive

• I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a public ward with a television blaring out a football match, all but drowning our final conversation.

  

  Gabriel Byrne
  • Friend
  • Football
  • Dying

• You look in my room and it looks neat enough, but if you dared to look under my bed or in my closet, oh what a mess!

  

  Tamera Mowry
  • You
  • Look
  • Bed

• I'm associated with gospel music in the minds of millions of people.

  

  Pat Boone
  • People
  • Music
  • Minds

• There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, 'look!'

  

  Carl Hiaasen
  • Country
  • Hate
  • Forget

• In my state, over 17,000 households are going hungry on a regular basis.

  

  Patrick J. Kennedy
  • Going
  • Hungry
  • Over

• I think beautiful independent films are made, and I think they're as close to what theater can be because they're not loaded with all of the extra stuff. It's human, and it's more organic, but theater is very unique... It's a different connection altogether.

  

  Sam Underwood
  • Different
  • Think
  • Beautiful

• Oh, I'm quite the impulse buyer. Most of what I buy is stuff for my Jeep, 'cause it breaks down a lot.

  

  Patrick Fugit
  • Down
  • Most
  • Oh

• The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Help
  • Words
  • Wife

• I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Think
  • Relationship
  • Poetry

• I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

  

  Eddie Marsan
  • People
  • Why
  • Guy

• No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

  

  Zainab Salbi
  • Up
  • Change
  • Stand

• It takes a little bit more mentally to figure out what I need to do to be most effective. The game is ever evolving. So you have to constantly pay attention to the change because you don't want to be left behind.

  

  D'Brickashaw Ferguson
  • Game
  • Want
  • Change

• I read all the time that people think I'm arrogant. They say I am cocky, a bad character. I had that from a young age. But when they meet me, they say, 'That image doesn't fit you.'

  

  Zlatan Ibrahimovic
  • People
  • Time
  • Character

• When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • People
  • Time
  • Writing

• Pure phenomenology claims to be the science of pure phenomena. This concept of the phenomenon, which was developed under various names as early as the eighteenth century without being clarified, is what we shall have to deal with first of all.

  

  Edmund Husserl
  • Science
  • Names
  • Early

• You'll see the most perfect person, and you are like, 'God, she's, like, perfect.' And then she'll tell you everything that's not perfect. Everyone has their own special set of problems - in their own minds.

  

  L'Wren Scott
  • God
  • Perfect
  • Person

• If I had to model clothes in a time period other than the 21st century, I think I'd like to model way back when they just wore skin loincloths. That would be best suited for me - better than corsets. I'm quite claustrophobic.

  

  Lara Stone
  • Time
  • Best
  • Period

• My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs - because, full disclosure, I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, 'Don't write that,' or, 'Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats.'

  

  Jeff Vandermeer
  • Up
  • Time
  • Coffee

• Just as I'm fortunate to pitch in the big leagues, I'm also fortunate for the time I get to spend outdoors.

  

  Jon Lester
  • Time

• I have invited our little seamstress to take her thread and needle and sew our two mouths together.

  

  Harry Crosby
  • Mouth
  • Thread
  • Needle

• These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow.

  

  Sam Snead
  • Shadow
  • Over
  • Fast

• I used to hitchhike a lot. I'd come home on the train from New York, and there'd be no cabs, but people would pick me right up and take me to my door because they recognised me. It was like a car service. I never really had a bad experience hitchhiking.

  

  John Waters
  • People
  • Up
  • Home

• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • People
  • Good
  • Democracy