H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.
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A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
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Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed.
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Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
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Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
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Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured and put into cans.
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A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
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A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.