H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.
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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth
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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
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One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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Every man is his own hell.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
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Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.