Memorable Quotes and quotations from H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)


H. L. Mencken -
- Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

H. L. Mencken -
- Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H. L. Mencken -
- The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

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 -
- A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

H. L. Mencken -
- Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

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 -
- Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken -
- Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

H. L. Mencken -
- Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken -
- The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

H. L. Mencken -
- Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.

H. L. Mencken -
- The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

H. L. Mencken -
- The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

H. L. Mencken -
- The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

H. L. Mencken -
- It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

H. L. Mencken -
- Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another

H. L. Mencken -
- A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

H. L. Mencken -
- The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken -
- The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

H. L. Mencken -
- The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken -
- Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

H. L. Mencken -
- The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.

H. L. Mencken -
- Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

H. L. Mencken -
- The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.

H. L. Mencken -
- He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.

H. L. Mencken -
- Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.

H. L. Mencken -
- Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.

H. L. Mencken -
- A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

H. L. Mencken -
- Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken -
- Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

H. L. Mencken -
- Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another.

H. L. Mencken -
- Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

H. L. Mencken -
- Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

H. L. Mencken -
- No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.

H. L. Mencken -
- 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 -
- Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

H. L. Mencken -
- Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

H. L. Mencken - A Mencken Chrestomathy
- There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken -
- New York: A third-rate Babylon.

H. L. Mencken -
- 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.

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 -
- Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself.

H. L. Mencken -
- War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands.

H. L. Mencken -
- A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken -
- Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken -
- Wife: a former sweetheart.

H. L. Mencken -
- ...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.

H. L. Mencken -
- The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken -
- Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

H. L. Mencken -
- To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.

H. L. Mencken -
- Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

H. L. Mencken -
- The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

H. L. Mencken -
- A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

H. L. Mencken -
- The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken -
- I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.

H. L. Mencken -
- The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

H. L. Mencken -
- Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

H. L. Mencken -
- A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

H. L. Mencken - A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
- Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

H. L. Mencken -
- All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

H. L. Mencken -
- Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.

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 -
- 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.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken -
- A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

H. L. Mencken -
- For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

H. L. Mencken -
- Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H. L. Mencken -
- Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

H. L. Mencken -
- When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands.

H. L. Mencken -
- The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken -
- The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken -
- An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H. L. Mencken -
- Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

H. L. Mencken -
- We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

H. L. Mencken -
- The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken -
- Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

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 -
- Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

H. L. Mencken -
- Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken -
- The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken -
- Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

H. L. Mencken -
- College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students - there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks.

H. L. Mencken -
- In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

H. L. Mencken -
- A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

H. L. Mencken -
- To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken -
- Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell.

H. L. Mencken -
- Lawer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

H. L. Mencken -
- Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken -
- Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

H. L. Mencken -
- Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

H. L. Mencken -
- Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.

H. L. Mencken -
- Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

H. L. Mencken -
- Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.

H. L. Mencken -
- Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

H. L. Mencken -
- Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.

H. L. Mencken -
- Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken -
- Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

H. L. Mencken -
- It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

H. L. Mencken -
- The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

H. L. Mencken -
- All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

H. L. Mencken -
- It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken -
- 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.

H. L. Mencken -
- Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly.

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 -
- There comes a time when a man must spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

H. L. Mencken -
- The worshiper is the father of the gods.

H. L. Mencken -
- Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.

H. L. Mencken -
- Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

H. L. Mencken -
- If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

H. L. Mencken - on Shakespeare
- After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

H. L. Mencken -
- Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- 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.

H. L. Mencken -
- Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

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 -
- The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H. L. Mencken -
- The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.

H. L. Mencken -
- Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

H. L. Mencken -
- The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken -
- And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

H. L. Mencken -
- God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, thehelpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.

H. L. Mencken -
- Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

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

H. L. Mencken -
- Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken -
- Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken - Prejudices: Second Series, 1920
- There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken -
- Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

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 -
- An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H. L. Mencken -
- Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.