All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.


H.L. Mencken

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN
It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN
I am Happy and satisfied with what I am. 10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will...
NEHA KOTHARI
If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar...
GARY F EVANS...
I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER
It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER
Unpredictability means what it means. I don't know how you define it. It is what it is.
MICHAEL KEATON
I take the good with the bad. I always wanted to be a comic, and part of that, for me, was that I wa...
ERIK GRIFFIN
It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delive...
DAN FLAVIN
With '10,000,' our aim was to make a film that was entertaining and a roller-coaster ride; i...
STEVEN STRAIT
Life is not all about sticking or stopping your thoughts to old memories but LIFE STARTS when you st...
NEHA KOTHARI
I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, 'This isn't true!' It is what...
HARRY STYLES
He had a harder time helping her out though. He was asleep while she was doing stars. Without wings,...
LAURIE FRANKEL
I saw that there is no Nature,
That Nature doesn’t exist,
That there are hills, valleys,...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
There was no Jace Wayland more real than the one he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.
CASSANDRA CLARE
You get to the point where you're like, 'I'm just doing me, and if people don't like...
BEBE REXHA
I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.
ALBERTO CAEIRO
See the world for what it is.
BEAUTIFUL!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS
When I was in college, I remember fearing that the dreary grind of adulthood would feature infinitel...
, VLOGBROTHERS, IS COLLEGE WORTH IT?, 08-21-12
It has been my experience that maximizing income is a helluva lot less important than maximizing pas...
, VLOGBROTHERS, IS COLLEGE WORTH IT?, 08-21-12
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
it's always important to do what you want, Life is too short to live with Regrets.
SHELLI THOMPSON
I'm not an Emontional, but how???
I live with the thought that "Nothing can be returned, it has...
DEYTH BANGER
Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY
You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS
When you're recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can't necessarily mani...
DAVE GROHL
This is too much reality for a Friday.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
The fact that I am Latino is not a secret. There's not much I can do about that. It is what it i...
PETE GALLEGO
If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
The Madden Curse has really taken on a life of its own. People just love talking about it, and it is...
DREW BREES
Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field
There passes for a moment the fig...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
It’s an already inside outside,
The philosophers say it’s the soul
But it’s not the ...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence me...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning ...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I'm probably the least harsh on myself, and I try not to scrutinize everything about my body. As...
KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN
Not everybody wants be texting their 15-year-old asking how his math tutor was. They would rather be...
RENEE JAMES
A lot of people say there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I don't think there's a fine li...
BILL BAILEY
I love you; I love you and I don’t care that you’re my sister; don’t be with him, don’t want...
CASSANDRA CLARE
The Queen gave him a look: special and secretive and shared between the two of them.You warned he...
CASSANDRA CLARE
I have Tourettes and Aspergers, but Tourrets and Aspergers don't have me. You know, I'm doin...
JAMES DURBIN
The king may rule the kingdom, but it's the queen who moves the board.
D.M. TIMNEY
What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.
ALBERTO CAEIRO
Night doesn’t fall for my eyes
But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes.
Be...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.
Nobody goes faster than the legs they...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I never had a problem with my face on screen. I thought it is what it is, and I was turned off by ac...
ROBERT REDFORD
It is what it is. I balled out, had some good years, man, had fun and did it with some guys and made...
CALVIN JOHNSON
I was born subject like others to errors and defects,
But never to the error of wanting to unde...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something e...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I'm living with every step. I can't live with regret. The past is the past. I'm not worr...
RYAN SHECKLER
The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.
But what does someone who hates and love...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER
The man held himself still and turned his milk-flooded eyes on her. Fin felt something like vertigo ...
A.S. PETERSON
Her hormones slipped into their sexy underwear with a grin.
JENNIFER SCHMIDT
The streets made me. They stay at me. There's nothing that's gonna take away from my legacy....
LIL' KIM
I'm one of my sensations.
ALBERTO CAEIRO
Boxing's a poor man's sport. We can't afford to play golf or tennis. It is what it is. I...
SUGAR RAY LEONARD
Cease to think of an impossibility and you will seize an opportunity for productivity. Excellence co...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
I consider a dream like I consider a shadow,” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected p...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
Let your actions speak LOVE. No matter what it is.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO
The possible is just the impossible that we've come to accept,
STEWART STAFFORD
I curate my life in a way. It's always playing on my mind, kind of a love-hate relationship. I&#...
LORDE
When you look at the inner workings of electrical things, you see wires. Until the current passes th...
MOTHER TERESA
I'm not sure what the future holds but I do know that I'm going to be positive and not wake ...
NICOLE KIDMAN
But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry — it’s seeing. Th...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
Even so, I’m somebody.
I’m the Discoverer of Nature.
I’m the Argonaut of true sensat...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it rui...
JULIAN CASABLANCAS
Everything known and referred to as “impossible” is often what has not been attempted before. It...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
Wrong?
So you are saying, I'm wrong okay then... It's not possible every time to be right, one ...
DEYTH BANGER
All's well that carries on well
AMIT ABRAHAM
The way President Abraham Lincoln is said to have handled a person who had a know-it-all attitude. L...
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The man or woman that believes their success soley rests on their actions is sorely mistaken.
JOHN LEACH
Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD
I speak the truth. Not everyone who says they are ready to hear it really are.
MONIKA ZANDS
If you have a question, ask. How do you ask? Say it or write it
SOTONYE ANGA
37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON
I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that's...
KEVIN GATES
Will they attack us? Yes. Will they smear our backgrounds and distort our records? Undoubtedly. Will...
CHRISTINE O'DONNELL
To be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who t...
CRISTIANO RONALDO
There's no more film. Film is gone. We photograph digitally and electronically. We don't rea...
STANLEY DONEN
And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything.
Who knows if I’ll be dead the ...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I'm just not into trying to convince people like me. I always say to myself, 'It is what it ...
NENE LEAKES
Instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will.
STEPHEN KING
Just do it... that's all... no matter what, when and where... but just do it.
DEYTH BANGER
What is worse, I leave it. What can't be understand, I leave it. What is bad, I leave it. What I say...
DEYTH BANGER
Ah,” Sean said, smothering a laugh. “The brilliant plan falling apart? Wow. Wish I’d seen that...
MAUREEN CHILD
Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-list...
THOMAS HARRIS
Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a limin...
PHIL KLAY
I want to feed my kid something that is real and not processed. It's hard to do. People are work...
TOM COLICCHIO
... As far I did it... I lost playing against my computer... and I won against my computer. So far t...
DEYTH BANGER
Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out i...
GEORGE ORWELL
God walked with humanity in the cool of the day and gave them the most difficult and hottest parts o...
JOEY TALLADINO
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own exper...
SUSAN SONTAG
Why things are not easy? * 'Cause life is not.
MAYANK KUMAR LOUTERIYA
More important, it's because God is our only true source of life.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
What is equity? It is the quality of citizens of a given society to relate to each other in fairness...
SUNDAY ADELAJA
Do. Then talk. In that order.
SOTERO M LOPEZ II
If you want a revenge, don't hold it. It poisons you.
Either you just let the grudge go, or mak...
TOBA BETA
You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you a...
PAULO COELHO
It ends or it doesn't.
That’s what you say. That’s
how you get through it.
The tu...
CAITLYN SIEHL
The brain says “it is impossible” and the legs respond “let’s sit down”. The brain says �...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR

More H.L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H.L. MENCKEN
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect...
H.L. MENCKEN
If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man confo...
H.L. MENCKEN
There is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter—this arrogant ja-sag...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is hard to tell if a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his plac...
H.L. MENCKEN
In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of co...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this worl...
H.L. MENCKEN
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul...
H.L. MENCKEN
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
As I grow older I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that giving each human being but one life is...
H.L. MENCKEN
ONE OF the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that re...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H.L. MENCKEN
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L. MENCKEN
Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H.L. MENCKEN
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian i...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true i...
H.L. MENCKEN
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it make...
H.L. MENCKEN
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the...
H.L. MENCKEN
People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it....
H.L. MENCKEN
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. Bu...
H.L. MENCKEN
All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing form...
H.L. MENCKEN
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always to...
H.L. MENCKEN
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom m...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and t...
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. MENCKEN
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. MENCKEN
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t...
H.L. MENCKEN
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H.L. MENCKEN
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.
H.L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H.L. MENCKEN
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-...
H.L. MENCKEN
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to susta...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to th...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every cit...
H.L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable ac...
H.L. MENCKEN
A judge is a law student who marks their own examination papers.
H.L. MENCKEN
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. MENCKEN
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certain...
H.L. MENCKEN
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral valu...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bri...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H.L. MENCKEN
Nature abhors a moron.
H.L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed ag...
H.L. MENCKEN
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery ...
H.L. MENCKEN
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sa...
H.L. MENCKEN
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasse...
H.L. MENCKEN
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice...
H.L. MENCKEN
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Sc...
H.L. MENCKEN
We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as somethi...
H.L. MENCKEN
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process i...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed...
H.L. MENCKEN
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Any man who inflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
H.L. MENCKEN
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
H.L. MENCKEN
The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a so...
H.L. MENCKEN
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H.L. MENCKEN
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object i...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H.L. MENCKEN
When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H.L. MENCKEN
I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.
H.L. MENCKEN
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H.L. MENCKEN
The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young...
H.L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed{and hence the clamorous to be le...
H.L. MENCKEN
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H.L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that te...
H.L. MENCKEN
For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to th...
H.L. MENCKEN
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief...
H.L. MENCKEN
What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Sci...
H.L. MENCKEN
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H.L. MENCKEN
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. MENCKEN
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian...
H.L. MENCKEN
Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge...
H.L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H.L. MENCKEN
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some...
H.L. MENCKEN
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN
The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H.L. MENCKEN
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivabl...
H.L. MENCKEN
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every h...
H.L. MENCKEN
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, wit...
H.L. MENCKEN
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and gre...
H.L. MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H.L. MENCKEN
He believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality...
H.L. MENCKEN
When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the su...
H.L. MENCKEN
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, f...
H.L. MENCKEN
In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But t...
H.L. MENCKEN
Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion o...
H.L. MENCKEN
Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures o...
H.L. MENCKEN
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H.L. MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the es...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
H.L. MENCKEN
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
H.L. MENCKEN
I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
H.L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agen...
H.L. MENCKEN
You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
H.L. MENCKEN
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; ...
H.L. MENCKEN
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H.L. MENCKEN
the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
H.L. MENCKEN
Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sak...
H.L. MENCKEN
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be r...
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist...
H.L. MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. MENCKEN
There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...
H.L. MENCKEN
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...
H.L. MENCKEN
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...
H.L. MENCKEN
That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS
You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary tr...
H.L. BURKE
A peaceful feeling: A happy harmony or symphony of all of our character pieces working in powerful u...
H.L. BALCOMB
ART happens every time we live in the spirit of the moment’s greatness" from Cinderella in Focus
H.L. BALCOMB
If religion is understanding God in the collective stories of life, then spirituality is finding God...
H.L. BALCOMB
When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life si...
H.L. BALCOMB
The smaller the item of gratitude, the purer is the connection to our heart.
H.L. BALCOMB
Vulnerability along with a sense of humility are the purest forms of strength.
H.L. BALCOMB
Her smile makes me feel like a million little stars have just found their home in the gravitational ...
H.L. BALCOMB
We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by pr...
H.L. WEGLEY
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner ...
HL MENCKEN
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
H. L. MENCKEN
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. MENCKEN
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MENCKEN
On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. MENCKEN
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
H. L. MENCKEN
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Time stays, we go.
H. L. MENCKEN
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
H. L. MENCKEN
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
H. L. MENCKEN
Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
H. L. MENCKEN
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will b...
H. L. MENCKEN
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surm...
H. L. MENCKEN
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
H. L. MENCKEN
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. MENCKEN
There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as ...
H. L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
H. L. MENCKEN
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys...
H. L. MENCKEN
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. MENCKEN
If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. MENCKEN
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's ...
H. L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led t...
H. L. MENCKEN
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe in the evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party...
H. L. MENCKEN
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
H. L. MENCKEN
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a c...
H. L. MENCKEN
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of du...
H. L. MENCKEN
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. MENCKEN
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many in...
H. L. MENCKEN
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. B...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
H. L. MENCKEN
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s...
H. L. MENCKEN
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will...
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H. L. MENCKEN
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
H. L. MENCKEN
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regar...
H. L. MENCKEN
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, th...
H. L. MENCKEN
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards ce...
H. L. MENCKEN
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better...
H. L. MENCKEN
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H. L. MENCKEN
Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.
H. L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
H. L. MENCKEN
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H. L. MENCKEN
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is t...
H. L. MENCKEN
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in l...
H. L. MENCKEN