H. L. Mencken Quotes

529 Sourced Quotes

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
Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.

H. L. Mencken
Women hate revolutions and revolutionists. They like men who are docile, and well-regarded at the bank, and never late at meals.

H. L. Mencken
The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.

H. L. Mencken
[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

H. L. Mencken
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
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

H. L. Mencken
All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

H. L. Mencken
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.

H. L. Mencken
When a husband's story is believed, he begins to suspect his wife.

H. L. Mencken
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
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
Pathology would remain a lovely science, even if there were no therapeutics, just as seismology is a lovely science, though no one knows how to stop earthquakes.

H. L. Mencken
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.

H. L. Mencken
All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.

H. L. Mencken
Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or what he submits to from his wife. Simply tell me how he makes his living. It is the safest and surest of all known tests. A man who gets his board and lodging on this ball in an ignominious way is inevitably an ignominious man.

H. L. Mencken
The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians -- and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.

H. L. Mencken
An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.

H. L. Mencken
He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.

H. L. Mencken
A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.

H. L. Mencken
A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.

H. L. Mencken
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
Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.

H. L. Mencken
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.

H. L. Mencken
Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

H. L. Mencken
Osteopath — One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone on soft tissue. The proof of his theory is to be found in the heads of those who believe it.

H. L. Mencken
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads

H. L. Mencken
The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.

H. L. Mencken
That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.

H. L. Mencken
What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain fact is that, if it be suitably selective, it is extremely salubrious. Suppose it could be so arranged that it ran to 100% a year among politicians, executive secretaries, drive chairmen, and the homicidally insane? What rational man would object?

H. L. Mencken