H. L. Mencken Quotes

“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”

“A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.”

“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.”

“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.”

“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”

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

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

“Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.”

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”

“Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”

“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.”

“Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.”

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.”

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”

“Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.”

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

“Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.”

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

“Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.”

“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

“Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.”

“Honor is simply the morality of superior men.”

“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

“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.”

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

“I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.”

“I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.”

“If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.”

“Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.”

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

“It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

“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.”

“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.”

“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.”

“Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.”

“Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.”

“Life is a dead-end street.”

“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

“Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.”

“Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.”

“Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.”

“Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.”

“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

“No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.”

“No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.”

“No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.”

“Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

“Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.”

“Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.”

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.”

“The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.”

“The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.”

“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

“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.”

“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.”

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

“The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.”

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

“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.”

“There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.”

“There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”

“To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.”

“Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.”

“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”

“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.”

“What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.”

“When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.”

“Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”

“Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.”