H. L. Mencken Quotes
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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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 curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
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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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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
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Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
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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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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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All government, of course, is against liberty.
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It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.
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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.