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H. L. Mencken [1880-1956] American

Rank: 3
Writer, Journalist

Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.

Women, Government, Marriage, Men, Truth, Funny, Good, War, Wisdom, Age, Experience, Faith, Great, History, Imagination, Intelligence, Love, Politics, Religion, Trust, Anniversary, Art, Best, Failure, Fear, Freedom, Friendship, God, Humor, Knowledge, Life, Money, Peace, Poetry, Relationship, Respect, Science, Sports, Teacher, Thankful, Time, Veterans Day, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
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.	Great	101
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.		102
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.	Politics	103
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.	Wisdom	104
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.	Politics, Thankful	105
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.	Government	106
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.	Good	107
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.		108
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.	Funny	109
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.		110
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.		111
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.	Marriage, Men, Women	112
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.	Veterans Day, War	113
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.		114
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.	Funny	115
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.	Imagination, Intelligence, Love	116
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.	Age, Wisdom	117
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.	Best	118
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.		119
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.		120
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.	Government	121
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.	Experience, Men, Wisdom, Women	122
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.		123
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.	Time	124
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.		125
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.	Religion	126
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.	Truth	201
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.		202
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.	Art, Government, Science	203
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.	Anniversary, Truth	204
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.		205
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.		206
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.		207
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.		208
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.	Knowledge	209
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.	Failure, God	210
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.	Faith	211
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.	Great, Intelligence, Money	212
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.		213
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.		214
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.	Men	215
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.	Good	216
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.	Truth	217
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.	Government	218
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.	Love, War	219
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.		220
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.		221
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.		222
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.		223
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.		224
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.	Men	225
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.	Marriage, Trust	226
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.		301
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.		302
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.	Good, Trust, Women	303
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.	Truth	304
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.		305
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.	Age, History	306
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.		307
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.	Men	308
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.		309
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.	Marriage	310
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.	Relationship	311
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.	Work	312
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.		313
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.	Religion, Respect	314
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.		315
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.	Faith	316
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.		317
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.	Government	318
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.		319
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!		320
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.	Experience, Women	321
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.		322
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.		323
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.		324
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.		325
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.		326
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.		401
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.		402
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.	Humor	403
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.		404
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.		405
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.	Life, War	406
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?	Funny, Marriage	407
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.		408
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.		409
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.		410
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.		411
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.		412
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.		413
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.		414
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.	Women	415
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.		416
God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.		417
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.		418
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.	Marriage	419
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.	Fear	420
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.		421
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.		422
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.		423
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.		424
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.	Women	425
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.		426
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.	Peace	501
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.		502
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.		503
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.		504
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.		505
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.		506
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.	Freedom	507
Life is a dead-end street.		508
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.		509
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.		510
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.		511
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.		512
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.		513
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.		514
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.		515
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.		516
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.		517
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.		518
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.		519
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.		520
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.		521
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.		522
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.	Poetry	523
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.	Friendship	524
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.		525
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.	History	526
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.	Sports	601
All government, of course, is against liberty.		602
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.		603
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.		604
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.		605
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.		606
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.		607
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.		608
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.		609
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.		610
Every man is his own hell.		611
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.		612
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.	Imagination	613
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.		614
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.		615
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.		616
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.		617
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.		618
Time stays, we go.		619
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.		620
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.	Teacher	621

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