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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.


H.L. Mencken

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Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE I can only speak as an American, but most journalism here isn't doing its job any more. It's...
LANCE REDDICK If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
JULIAN ASSANGE Surely the glory of journalism is its transience. - The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge, 1966.
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley ...
JOHN SCALZI Journalism seems to have recovered its reason for being.
HOWARD KURTZ In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The...
TONY KUSHNER The anchoring job of the evening news is still the most prestigious job in American journalism, cert...
ROBERT ZELNICK Our government is deeply disordered; its credit is impaired; its debt increasing; its expenditures e...
JOHN C. CALHOUN Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution.
THOMAS FRANK Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live i...
JOHN HERSEY I have nothing but the highest regard for 'Salon' and its commitment to independent and prov...
GLENN GREENWALD There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires to truth. Advertis...
JEF I. RICHARDS Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, a...
HENRY ANATOLE GRUNWALD Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulga...
OSCAR WILDE Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulga...
OSCAR WILDE I think the best of it is that journalism knows it has not done its best. That is new.
JEFF JARVIS There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires to truth. Advertis...
JEF I. RICHARDS Any staffing changes that disproportionately cut the number of African Americans at CNN - intentiona...
MARCIA FUDGE Art is art, and journalism is journalism.
LANCE REDDICK Schools of journalism at exemplary American research universities, where the academic disciplines st...
VARTAN GREGORIAN One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The wor...
DAVID SIMON We had a look at the numbers, but its panels are predominantly wooden and in decline.
ANDREW FLANAGAN Like business and journalism, these are unregulated professions in an uncredentialed field,
DANIEL CALLAHAN I always like to have a buffer between me and journalism in general. Not just a reporter, but journa...
T. J. MILLER Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is f...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and li...
OSCAR WILDE Frank: All the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism. Arthur: Christianity, of cou...
FRANK HARRIS Of course you are American,' he said, and waived his hand, like waving away the sentiment. 'What oth...
TONY D'SOUZA The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, tha...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, u...
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON WikiLeaks, for me, has not only that element in it of journalism publishing, but also the way in whi...
SARAH HARRISON The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is ...
OSCAR WILDE The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is...
OSCAR WILDE The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.
WILLIAM FAULKNER Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism
TRISTAN TZARA CNN is an American symbol of independent journalism and First Amendment free speech. My board and I ...
RANDALL L. STEPHENSON It's a functional test: Is what you are doing journalism?
LAUREN GELMAN This is not a partisan committee. The congressman has never treated it like that, and its many achie...
BRIAN WALSH Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of do...
MAUREEN DOWD Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of...
RUPERT MURDOCH Take me to the height where success would seek my help to succeed!
I ARE The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journali...
MICHAEL POLLAN Don't count out other amazing programming like Frontline. You will still find more hours of in-d...
GWEN IFILL I did what any American could and should do: serve his country in its time of need.
BOB FELLER People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant.
RICK BRAGG I think that more diversity is a good thing, and fresh points of view articulated by people who are ...
AL GORE Chicago, with its big newspapers and major broadcasting stations, couldn't have been a better ci...
IRV KUPCINET These costs are not insignificant for an airline that is fighting for its survival.
JOE KOLSHAK The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-was...
GAY TALESE Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of ...
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH Christianity naturally, but why journalism?
ARTHUR BALFOUR Christianity naturally, but why journalism?
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in...
DICK SCHAAP All of journalism is a shrinking art, ... So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmar...
DICK SCHAAP The voice I've chosen to turn to is that of NPR. With a reputation for some of the finest journa...
LYNDA RESNICK Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so cor...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H.L. MENCKEN I didn't like the competitiveness of big-time journalism.
CHARLES KURALT The country of the Two Holy Places has in our religion a peculiarity of its own over the other Musli...
OSAMA BIN LADEN There are a lot of really good skills you get from doing journalism - it completely changed my world...
BENJAMIN BOOKER We are keeping an eye on what is happening. The regulatory regime is in place if there are problems ...
GERRY SUTCLIFFE Journalism is the entertainment business.
FRANK HERBERT The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or milita...
HERBERT READ Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.
RICHARD SCHICKEL Journalism is organized gossip.
EDWARD EGGLESTON Journalism is the first rough draft of history.
OSCAR WILDE Newspapers are not made any longer by news or journalism. They are made by sheer weight of money exp...
OSWALD MOSLEY When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, lite...
SENO GUMIRA AJIDARMA You can construct whatever story you want to. Documentaries are constructions, as is all journalism.
TIM HETHERINGTON Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
WALTER CRONKITE Never Forget Who You Are Beacause Its Like Forgetingg Water Is Wet,The Sun Is Bright,Snow Is Cold.It...
ANDREW FUKUDA These students are the cream of the crop. We have hundreds apply every year from all over the countr...
DEBBIE MILLAN There is no more respected or influential forum in the field of journalism than the New York Times. ...
TED KOPPEL There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for...
EULA BISS Hyde Park of journalism.
HARRY LEE We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate, of our journalism, has been built o...
MALCOLM TURNBULL Journalism delivers news, but not necessarily relevance.
KHANG KIJARRO NGUYEN I know it may seem small and insignificant but its not about what it is, its about what it can becom...
OLASOT Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us t...
ANONYMOUS Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us t...
OSCAR WILDE The quality of life in America is dependent on the quality of the journalism. Most people don't ...
SCOTT PELLEY So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a...
SAMANTHA POWER Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, a...
ANDREW VACHSS I think when money starts to corrupt journalism, it undermines the journalism, and it undermines the...
WALTER ISAACSON Readers are responsible for deciding if the information (they read) is true. There has always been b...
JEFF HESS I personally think honestly disclosing rather than hiding one's subjective values makes for more...
GLENN GREENWALD Worthless is the nation that does not gladly stake its all on its honor.
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER Worthless is the nation that does not gladly stake its all on its honor.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER I have a built-in bias against reporters who have axes to grind. I think there are reporters that al...
DON HEWITT His obituaries and feature stories about the slain soldiers of the Iraq War are valuable as history,...
MARILYN JOHNSON What I like to call 'journalism of depth' is the media that regards the collective conscienc...
WADAH KHANFAR It tends to be overlooked that many people are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journali...
DIANA RIGG I don't think it is just in the world of politics. The lack of civility in society as a whole, s...
KAREN HANDEL Journalism is merely history's first draft.
GEOFFREY C. WARD Journalism is literature in a hurry.
MATTHEW ARNOLD The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism ca...
MALCOLM GLADWELL I like to say that journalism is the graduate school from which you never graduate.
PETE HAMILL

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