Top 936 Quotes & Sayings by H. L. Mencken
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer H. L. Mencken.
Last updated on September 9, 2024.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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.
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.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
Life is a dead-end street.
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.
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
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.
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.
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 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.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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.
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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.
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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.
God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
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.
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