H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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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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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.
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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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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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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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All government, of course, is against liberty.
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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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All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
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No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion.
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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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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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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.
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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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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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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
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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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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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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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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.