H.L. Mencken Quotes

After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.

A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.

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 safeguard bad work.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

Suicide is a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.

The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.

Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

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

There is no record in the history of a nation that ever gained anything valuable by being unable to defend itself.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.

A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

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

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

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Self-respect - The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.

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

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.

Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.

The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.

Every man is his own hell.

Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.

He who eats alone chokes alone.

Nature abhors a moron.

A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

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

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.