H.L. Mencken Quotes
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
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.
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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.
Men are the only animals that devote themselves day in and day out to making one another unhappy.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy but that it is a bore.
Unionism seldom if ever uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work.
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with - even if he drank.
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
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.
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99% of them are wrong.
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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.
Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority.
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.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing they marry later. For another thing they die earlier.
No matter how happily a woman may be married it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not.
A Puritan is a person who lives in the fear that someone somewhere may be having a good time.
