H. L. Mencken Quotes
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far - much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.
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The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
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A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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The central difficulty lies in the fact that all of the sciences have made such great progress during the last century that they have got quite beyond the reach of man
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.