H. L. Mencken Quotes

All government, of course, is against liberty.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that...

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of du...

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be r...

The best client is a scared millionaire.

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live...

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian i...

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the ...

It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mysti...

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more lik...

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wron...

Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that ...

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told reg...

Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...

We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lift...

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young...

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

Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes...

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of...

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.

The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear-fear of the unknown the complex the inexplic...

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itsel...

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

We are here and it is now. Further than that all knowledge is moonshine.

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our f...

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party...

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time ma...

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world or to l...

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing they marry later. For another thing th...

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that th...

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, th...

Opera in English is in the main just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...

Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.

If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost forgive some...

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ...

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...

Men are the only animals that devote themselves day in and day out to making one another unhappy.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

Unionism seldom if ever uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes...

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more fool...

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

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and huma...

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99% of them are w...

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

Time is a great legalizer even in the fields of morals.

The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has be...

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with - even if he drank.

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

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

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were i...

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not s...

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

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

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as s...

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in l...

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed age...

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regar...

What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.

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

'Tis more blessed to give than to receive for example wedding presents.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...

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

A Puritan is a person who lives in the fear that someone somewhere may be having a good time.

The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work stretch out in the su...

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator and not infr...

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's ...