H.L. Mencken Quotes

No sane man objects to palpable lies about him; what he objects to is damaging facts.

The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.

Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.

During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.

The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.

The prophesying business is like writing fugues; it is fatal to every one save the man of absolute genius.

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

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

The best client is a scared millionaire.

Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.

The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.

Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.

If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

The university president who cashiered every professor unwilling to support Woodrow Wilson for the first vacancy in the Trinity. . . .

Christian - One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.

Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.

I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.

The great achievement of liberal Protestantism was to make God boring.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public

[Art is] an attempt to escape from life.

Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow.

In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.

The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.

[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.

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

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

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.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

New York: A third-rate Babylon.

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

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.

Wherever I sit is the head of the table.

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.