A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Every man is his own hell.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Life is a dead-end street.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
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.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
- H. L. Mencken Quote
