H. L. Mencken famous quotes

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Love #Anniversary #War

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Peace #Freedom #War

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

#Freedom #Integrity #Men

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

#Freedom #Honesty #Hate

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

#Freedom #Safety #Political

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Taken #Responsibility #Men

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Thinking #Insane

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Learning #Enlightenment #Safe

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.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Might #Information #Proof

There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
-- H. L. Mencken

#Eye #Tennessee #Purpose

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

#Freedom #Democracy #Politics

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

#God #Being Happy #Cynical

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Political #Promise #Politics

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

#Men #Government #Liberty

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

#Patriotism #United States #Doing Good

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

#Love #Funny #Marriage

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

#Peace #Freedom #War

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Heart #White #Land

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.
-- H. L. Mencken

#War #Men #Civilization

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Ignorance #Liberty

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Funny Inspirational #Freedom #Business

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Vision #Hallucinations

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Husband #Stupid #Would Be

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Sex #Fighting #Men

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Atheism #Matter #Morality

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

#Inspirational #Nature #Truth

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

#Freedom #War #Party

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Time #Freedom #Fighting

Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Childhood #Genius #Ability

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Progress #Aberration #Conformity

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Poverty #Common #Kind

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Beautiful #Respect #Atheist

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

#Funny #Badass #Bad Ass

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Religion #Democracy

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

#Flower #Men #Smell

If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Democracy #Politics #Honest

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Country #Hate #Patriotism

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Mean #Two #Practice

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Honesty #Thinking #Religion

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre....
-- H. L. Mencken

#Thinking #Men #Odds

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Thinking #Able

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Educational #Simple #Ideas

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Liberty #Auctions #Politics

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

#Wisdom #Men #Ideas

The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Gossip #Indignant #Doings

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Believe #Thinking #Damage

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

#Freedom #Men #Sick

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Atheist #Mistake #Way

When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Atheist #Believe #Forever

Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Atheist #Garbage #Deserve

To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong...
-- H. L. Mencken

#Simple #Thinking #Answers

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Doctrine #Spirituality

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Atheist #Men #Realistic

On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Hilarious #Men #Issues

The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Teacher #Children #Best Teacher

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Believe #Religion #Mankind

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Change #Kings #Men

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Doe #Next

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

#Funny #Philosophy #Science

Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Strong #Government #Dying

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

#Hate #Women #Inspiration

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

#Faith #Men #Dull

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Education #Teacher #Teaching

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

#Truth #Opposites #Errors

If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Average #Made

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Art #World #Puritan

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Writing #Blow #Trying

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Truth #Philosophy

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Rights #Law

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

#Essence #Ideas #Religion

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

#Freedom #Comedian #World

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Funny #Freedom #Freedom Of The Press

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Believe #School #Boys

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
-- H. L. Mencken

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Mistake #Men #Thinking

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Men #Average

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Success #Truth #Liars

A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Love #Funny Valentines Day #Women

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

#Men #Race #Ideas

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Life #Ocean #Excellence

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Freedom #Average #Law

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Art #Latin #Believe

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Political #Democracy #Life Is

Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Funny #Dog #Long

You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Change #Wisdom #Purpose

Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Work #Men #Eggs

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Love #Courage #Men

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else...Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Patriotic #Thinking #Everyday

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Lying #Heart #Car

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Christian #Thinking #Spirit

All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Essence #Enemy

There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Differences #Voting #Made

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

#Men #Enemy #Favors

For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Believe #Order #Ignorant

All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.
-- H. L. Mencken

#War #Lynching #Spain

The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Men #Enemy #Politics

The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Equality #Kind #Annoying

[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Fighting #Government #People

It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Exercise #Government #Practice

The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
-- H. L. Mencken

#Rights #Troops #Citizens