H. L. Mencken Quotes
-
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
-
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
-
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
-
I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.
-
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.
-
Every man is his own hell.
-
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
-
The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.
-
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
-
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
-
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
-
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
-
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
-
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
-
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
-
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
-
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
-
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
-
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.
-
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.
-
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.
-
Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
-
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.