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Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.


H. L. Mencken

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Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepare to see them misunderstood.
H. L. MENCKEN Any man who inflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
H.L. MENCKEN Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. thanks to Alan Bennett -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN A man who seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society
FREDERICK THE GREAT A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting ...
WILLIAM MCFEE The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone.
H e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d ...
TAHEREH MAFI You've got to S-M-I-L-E
To be H-A-Double-P-Y
SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK Disclaimer - These opiini^H^H damn! ^H^H ^Q ^[ .... :w :q :wq :wq! ^d X ^? exit X Q ^C ^? :quitbye C...
B. F. SKINNER The goal of argumentation is to make a case so forceful (note the metaphor) that skeptics are coerce...
STEVEN PINKER I I I I I I t t t t t t i i i i i i s s s s s s u u u u u u n n n n n n f f f f f f o o o o o o r r ...
TODD COBURN Though there are some notable exceptions, by and large the persistent ranting of the Warren Commissi...
VINCENT BUGLIOSI Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one e...
CARL SAGAN HELP = H(umor), E-go, edging God out, L-istening, P-urpose
KEN BLANCHARD HELP = H(umor), E-go, edging God out, L-istening, P-urpose.
KEN BLANCHARD It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profit...
L. NEIL SMITH A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.
EPICTETUS There is only enough time in this world for me to be me. I don't have time to be anyone else." H,L,S...
SUSIE L HILL And those who, when great wrong afflicts them, defend themselves.
QURAN There must always be those with the fire of rebellion in their blood! There must always be those who...
STAN LEE A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A government must always be prepared for the unexpected.
PALANIAPPAN CHIDAMBARAM As a world leader, America must be prepared to confront any challenge.
CHRISTOPHER DODD I know of no great man except those who have rendered great services to the human race.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET) Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
HENRY MILLER He could influence the outcome of the race. If he does have any ideas he wants to see advanced, this...
JOE MONAHAN We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human ...
JOHN NAISBITT The young must be prepared to experience innumerable disappointments and yet not fail.
ELLEN KEY Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
JOHANN VON GOETHE Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT I just never thought I'd get to see how beautiful you'd become
JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT You're beautiful, too. I mean, you're hot,” I blurted out. “But I always knew you would be.” m...
JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT He [Brian Fraser] told me that a man must be responsible for any see he sows, for it's his duty to t...
DIANA GABALDON Ideas won't keep, something must be done about them.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.
JAMES AGEE For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we ...
ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON Morality is the theory that every h uman act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them a...
H. L. MENCKEN A man must be prepared to face life, as well as death, there's no escape from either.
ELLIS PETERS The news today is just the tip of the iceberg for L & H. This is a classic story of the chicken comi...
LANNY DAVIS He who is prepared for the future and he who deals cleverly with any situation that may arise are bo...
CHANAKYA Now the true soldiers of Christ must always be prepared to do battle for the truth, and must never, ...
ORIGEN We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one rac...
DAN AYKROYD The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, w...
ELIZABETH GILBERT [H]er mind was like a balloon with static cling, attracting random ideas as they floated by[.]
JONATHAN FRANZEN Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any ...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW You start to feel panic, because you realise that human beings are possessed by the idea that they m...
GREG BAXTER The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any tim...
MARK TWAIN Man must be prepared for every event of life, for there is nothing that is durable.
MENANDER If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure full...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT Our strategic plan calls for Canada to be a world leading alpine racing country by 2010. With signif...
MAX GARTNER Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to ...
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON A man must be potent and orgasmic to ensure the future of the race.
A woman only needs to be avai...
MASTERS AND JOHNSON One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
GEORGE SANTAYANA Our human tendency is to be impatient with the person who cannot see the truth that is so plain to u...
HENRY B. EYRING Keeping the human race in check must require a lot of multitasking.
PAUL MCAULEY The protagonist in 'Deacon Blues' is a triple-L loser - an L-L-L Loser. It's not so much...
WALTER BECKER To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority mus...
GORE VIDAL Various kinds of ideas can be classified by their relationship to the authentication process. There...
THOMAS SOWELL I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly.
WINSTON CHURCHILL I don't run anybody else's race. When the gun goes off, I must evaluate with my own body and...
CATHERINE NDEREBA The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no...
ROBERT HEINLEIN To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good i...
H. L. WAYLAND Were it not for frustration and humiliation
I suppose the human race would get ideas above its ...
OGDEN NASH The Jews are members of the human race - worse I can say of no man
MARK TWAIN Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square h...
STEVE JOBS Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but ev...
VICTOR HUGO Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for an...
MURRAY ROTHBARD I love getting on the subway because you get on the car, and you see the entire human race represent...
TIM DALY The institution of Royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.
MARK TWAIN Any man who does not accept the conditions of human life sells his soul.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To not be optimistic about the human race, would be a disregard of the power of the Spirit who creat...
MARTIN SUAREZ Cockroach: What is war?
Man: How we lost the human race.
ANTHONY MARAIS Liberals, many of them, not all of them, but many of them are obsessed with race. They see everythin...
BERNARD GOLDBERG Each work has to pass through these stages – ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance Each man wh...
PT. SHRI RAM SHARMA AACHARYA An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels s...
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Any man who does not see everything in terms of self, that is to say who wants to be something in re...
EDMOND DE GONCOURT Any man who does not see everything in terms of self, that is to say who wants to be something in re...
EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defecti...
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ...
WARREN BENNIS People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ...
WARREN G. BENNIS It is not enough to be an upright man, we must be seen to be one; society does not exist on moral id...
HONORE DE BALZAC No man enters a race or fight with the purpose of losing, one must therefore arm oneself with the ar...
DEYON ANTEKO PITTER A man must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ...
G.K. CHESTERTON Be prepared and be honest.
JOHN WOODEN The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost ...
H.L. MENCKEN When I see those sad, abused and neglected animals on those commercials I feel despair for the human...
DEAN KOONTZ If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be bur...
ALEISTER CROWLEY Human is what he decides to be.
ZAMAN ALI The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.....
RAYMOND CHANDLER Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. ...
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
JOSEPH BRODSKY Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.

- Jane
J.R. WARD The UN declaration on human rights must always be first in line before religion or other cultural ha...
BJORN ULVAEUS The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in ...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must ...
DIANA WYNNE JONES

More H. L. 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 The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. 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 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 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 A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean...
H. L. MENCKEN Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usuall...
H. L. MENCKEN There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.
H. L. MENCKEN An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is a...
H. L. MENCKEN Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid f...
H. L. MENCKEN A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendura...
H. L. MENCKEN Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKEN Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is...
H. L. MENCKEN I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upo...
H. L. MENCKEN There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hou...
H. L. MENCKEN Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that th...
H. L. MENCKEN One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly m...
H. L. MENCKEN A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. MENCKEN On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery ...
H. L. MENCKEN Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
H. L. MENCKEN What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. MENCKEN Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. MENCKEN Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
H. L. MENCKEN If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust under the United Sta...
H. L. MENCKEN It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite eas...
H. L. MENCKEN Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their ...
H. L. MENCKEN The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H. L. MENCKEN Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and h...
H. L. MENCKEN Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
H. L. MENCKEN The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest...
H. L. MENCKEN The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
H. L. MENCKEN Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W...
H. L. MENCKEN It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as ha...
H. L. MENCKEN Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
H. L. MENCKEN A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
H. L. MENCKEN Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H. L. MENCKEN As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. MENCKEN Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
H. L. MENCKEN Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. MENCKEN The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not s...
H. L. MENCKEN Historian -- an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. MENCKEN Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
H. L. MENCKEN The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evid...
H. L. MENCKEN Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, a...
H. L. MENCKEN The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the cre...
H. L. MENCKEN The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be...
H. L. MENCKEN God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only san...
H. L. MENCKEN The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craf...
H. L. MENCKEN Injustice is relatively easy to bear what stings is justice.
H. L. MENCKEN The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the ...
H. L. MENCKEN JUDGE, n: A law student who marks his own papers.
H. L. MENCKEN Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. MENCKEN The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours....
H. L. MENCKEN Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Fathe...
H. L. MENCKEN Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
H. L. MENCKEN Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not...
H. L. MENCKEN Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. MENCKEN The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which ...
H. L. MENCKEN Alimony -- the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. MENCKEN A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
H. L. MENCKEN No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
H. L. MENCKEN The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certaint...
H. L. MENCKEN It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
H. L. MENCKEN When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
H. L. MENCKEN A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKEN The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
H. L. MENCKEN The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
H. L. MENCKEN Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.
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 After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. MENCKEN Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes...
H. L. MENCKEN I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. MENCKEN The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spend...
H. L. MENCKEN Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it.
H. L. MENCKEN Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H. L. MENCKEN Life is a dead-end street.
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 It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c...
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 No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. MENCKEN The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essential...
H. L. MENCKEN The more a man dreams, the less he believes.
H. L. MENCKEN On one issue at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays twice as much in taxes as he former...
H. L. MENCKEN The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the...
H. L. MENCKEN Before a man speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks it is seldom nec...
H. L. MENCKEN How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a w...
H. L. MENCKEN The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
H. L. MENCKEN Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundre...
H. L. MENCKEN Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other a...
H. L. MENCKEN Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. MENCKEN To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
H. L. MENCKEN The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another...
H. L. MENCKEN I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
H. L. MENCKEN It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. MENCKEN Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. MENCKEN On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at la...
H. L. MENCKEN Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. MENCKEN In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
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 It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones...
H. L. MENCKEN Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
H. L. MENCKEN In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t...
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 doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sou...
H. L. MENCKEN Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MENCKEN An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will a...
H. L. MENCKEN Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...
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 Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven...
H. L. MENCKEN Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed age...
H. L. MENCKEN The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...
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 I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of peop...
H. L. MENCKEN The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regar...
H. L. MENCKEN Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
H. L. MENCKEN If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries fo...
H. L. MENCKEN It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ...
H. L. MENCKEN Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
H. L. MENCKEN Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom nec...
H. L. MENCKEN For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our f...
H. L. MENCKEN Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he fo...
H. L. MENCKEN Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. MENCKEN Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
H. L. MENCKEN Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. MENCKEN Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time ma...
H. L. MENCKEN Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
H. L. MENCKEN A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ...
H. L. MENCKEN There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are goo...
H. L. MENCKEN