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H. L. Mencken Quotes
A bore is simply a
nonentity who resents his humble lot in life, and seeks satisfaction
for his wounded ego by forcing himself on his betters.
H. L. Mencken
A church is a
place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to
persons who will never get there.
H. L. Mencken
A cynic is a man
who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. Mencken
A good politician
is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
A judge is a law
student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. Mencken
A man always
remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he
begins to bunch them.
H. L. Mencken
A man may be a
fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. Mencken
A metaphysician is
one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know
what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four.
For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental
luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent
men.
H. L. Mencken
A national
political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a
mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
H. L. Mencken
A newspaper is a
device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken
A politician is an
animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. Mencken
A professor must
have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
H. L. Mencken
A prohibitionist
is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken
A society made up
of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably
be unendurable.
H. L. Mencken
A Sunday school is
a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their
parents.
H. L. Mencken
Adultery is the
application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken
After all, all he
did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken
Alimony - the
ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
All government, of
course, is against liberty.
H. L. Mencken
All men are
frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I
myself deny it.
H. L. Mencken
An idealist is one
who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that
it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken
Archbishop - A
Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
As the arteries
grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. Mencken
Bachelors know
more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. Mencken
Communism, like
any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a
mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. Mencken
Conscience is the
inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
H. L. Mencken
Criticism is
prejudice made plausible.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is a
pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is also
a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is only
a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus,
and Heaven.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the
art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the
theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get
it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Don't overestimate
the decency of the human race.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
Every decent man
is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken
Every election is
a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken
Every normal man
must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,
and begin slitting throats.
H. L. Mencken
Faith may be
defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
H. L. Mencken
For centuries,
theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of
the-not-worth-knowing.
H. L. Mencken
For every complex
problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
For every problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
For it is mutual
trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations
together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe.
Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
H. L. Mencken
Giving every man a
vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them
good.
H. L. Mencken
Have you ever
watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic
Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
H. L. Mencken
He slept more than
any other President, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but
Coolidge only snored.
H. L. Mencken
Historian: an
unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. Mencken
Honor is simply
the morality of superior men.
H. L. Mencken
Husbands never
become good; they merely become proficient.
H. L. Mencken
Hygiene is the
corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a
hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory
of the virtuous. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous;
it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.
H. L. Mencken
I believe in only
one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to
force it upon anyone.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that all
government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of
time.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that it
is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be
free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be
ignorant.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that it
should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the
pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest
minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority
is not prohibition, but avoidance.
H. L. Mencken
I give you
Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk.
It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout
to tail.
H. L. Mencken
I go on working
for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. Mencken
I hate all sports
as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
H. L. Mencken
I never lecture,
not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the
sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
H. L. Mencken
I never smoked a
cigarette until I was nine.
H. L. Mencken
I write in order
to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which
a cow enjoys on giving milk.
H. L. Mencken
If a politician
found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them
missionaries for dinner.
H. L. Mencken
If I ever marry,
it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself.
H. L. Mencken
If women believed
in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good
deal more foolish.
H. L. Mencken
If, after I depart
this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost,
forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H. L. Mencken
Imagine the
Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes
explicable.
H. L. Mencken
Immorality: the
morality of those who are having a better time.
H. L. Mencken
In this world of
sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me,
I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H. L. Mencken
In war the heroes
always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
H. L. Mencken
Injustice is
relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.
H. L. Mencken
It doesn't take a
majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders
and a sound cause.
H. L. Mencken
It is even harder
for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H. L. Mencken
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