Mencken Quotes

#1. I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken.

Ernest Hemingway,

#2. If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.

Jorge Luis Borges

#3. Love is like war. Easy to begin, but very hard to stop." ~H.L. MENCKEN

R.K. Lilley

#4. In Mencken's view, "religion belongs to a very early stage of human development, and ... its rapid decay in the world since the Reformation is evidence of genuine progress" ("The Ascent of Man").

H.L. Mencken

#5. H. L. Mencken said, The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Ron Paul

#6. H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

Ben Hecht

#7. Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. MENCKEN

Frank Luntz

#8. Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.

John Scalzi

#9. The number of men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of the government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain. (Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp.

Murray N. Rothbard

#10. You know what H.L. Mencken said one time about religious people? He said he'd been greatly misunderstood. He said he didn't hate them. He simply found them comical.

Kurt Vonnegut

#11. If H. P. Lovecraft and H. L. Mencken had ever collaborated, they might have come up with something like The Edge of Reason. This one will delight thinkers-and outrage true believers-of all stripes.

George R R Martin

#12. An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person." ~ Henry Louis Mencken

H.L. Mencken

#13. What Mencken most strongly objected to in religion was not the expression of nonsensical views - these could easily be combated by rebuttal from the other side - but the inveterate tendency of religion to seek the enforcement of its views by the power of the government.

H.L. Mencken

#14. H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken - there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.

Maxwell Bodenheim

#15. H. L. Mencken told me once that he answered all his mail, pleasant and unpleasant, with just one line, 'You may be right.' That's the way I feel now. It is in the realm of possibility, just barely, that I could be the one who's wrong.

Clare Boothe Luce

#16. Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. Mencken

R.K. Lilley

#17. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken

#18. The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in the
Trinity ...

H.L. Mencken

#19. Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.

H.L. Mencken

#20. Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

H.L. Mencken

#21. The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.

H.L. Mencken

#22. The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

H.L. Mencken

#23. Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another.

H.L. Mencken

#24. The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

H.L. Mencken

#25. No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.

H.L. Mencken

#26. A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

H.L. Mencken

#27. A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

H.L. Mencken

#28. A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

H.L. Mencken

#29. Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.

H.L. Mencken

#30. Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.

H.L. Mencken

#31. A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

H.L. Mencken

#32. On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.

H.L. Mencken

#33. If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina.

H.L. Mencken

#34. Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place

H.L. Mencken

#35. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

H.L. Mencken

#36. America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.

H.L. Mencken

#37. The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters.

H.L. Mencken

#38. The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits

H.L. Mencken

#39. A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H.L. Mencken

#40. The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H.L. Mencken

#41. After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

H.L. Mencken

#42. Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

H.L. Mencken

#43. The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

H.L. Mencken

#44. When I reach the shades at last it will no doubt astonish Satan to discover, on thumbing my dossier, that I was a member of the Y.M.C.A.

H.L. Mencken

#45. A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

H.L. Mencken

#46. The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

H.L. Mencken

#47. The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.

H.L. Mencken

#48. Sunday school: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H.L. Mencken

#49. Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

H.L. Mencken

#50. The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.

H.L. Mencken

#51. Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

H.L. Mencken

#52. Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.

H.L. Mencken

#53. Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H.L. Mencken

#54. The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

H.L. Mencken

#55. Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.

H.L. Mencken

#56. The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.

H.L. Mencken

#57. Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.

H.L. Mencken

#58. The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

H.L. Mencken

#59. No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

H.L. Mencken

#60. Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

H.L. Mencken

#61. It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

H.L. Mencken

#62. There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

H.L. Mencken

#63. The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

H.L. Mencken

#64. No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.

H.L. Mencken

#65. The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.

H.L. Mencken

#66. The dying man doesn't struggle much and he isn't much afraid. As his alkalies give out he succumbs to a blest stupidity. His mindfogs. His will power vanishes. He submits decently. He scarcely gives a damn.

H.L. Mencken

#67. [Government's] great contribution to human wisdom ... is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

H.L. Mencken

#68. When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.

H.L. Mencken

#69. Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.

H.L. Mencken

#70. No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

H.L. Mencken

#71. Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

H.L. Mencken

#72. Morality and honor are not to be confused. The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

H.L. Mencken

#73. It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

H.L. Mencken

#74. 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.

H.L. Mencken

#75. The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

H.L. Mencken

#76. The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine hard to distinguish from piling bricks to a kind of frenzy closely related to delirium tremens.

H.L. Mencken

#77. After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

H.L. Mencken

#78. Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H.L. Mencken

#79. Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.

H.L. Mencken

#80. Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H.L. Mencken

#81. For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.

H.L. Mencken

#82. The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.

H.L. Mencken

#83. [Texas is] the place where there are the most cows and the least milk and the most rivers and the least water in them, and where you can look the farthest to see the least.

H.L. Mencken

#84. The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

H.L. Mencken

#85. In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

H.L. Mencken

#86. A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

H.L. Mencken

#87. The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

H.L. Mencken

#88. The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.

H.L. Mencken

#89. 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.

H.L. Mencken

#90. On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.

H.L. Mencken

#91. History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

H.L. Mencken

#92. Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master.

H.L. Mencken

#93. The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.

H.L. Mencken

#94. The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.

H.L. Mencken

#95. In the duel of sex, woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

H.L. Mencken

#96. It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

H.L. Mencken

#97. They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

H.L. Mencken

#98. This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

H.L. Mencken

#99. A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

H.L. Mencken

#100. Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

H.L. Mencken