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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.


H.L. Mencken

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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 the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
H. L. MENCKEN Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.
THE KINKS Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H.L. MENCKEN You can't ask for what you want unless you know what it is. A lot of people don't know what they wan...
BARBARA DE ANGELIS Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley ...
JOHN SCALZI What we realize is number one, people want to know what the Bible says. In their heart, they want to...
MAX LUCADO To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democra...
AHMET DAVUTOGLU Democracy means nothing if people are not able to work the democracy for the common good.
CHANDRA BHUSHAN You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS It's impossible to know why some people don't get the recognition that they deserve.
GRAHAM NASH What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common ...
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS They know what they want, but aren't sure how to find it.
JAMES C. DOBSON It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom menti...
CORMAC MCCARTHY I see ... the faces of these young people, and I see their hearts and that they really do want chang...
ANITA HILL Unpredictability means what it means. I don't know how you define it. It is what it is.
MICHAEL KEATON Let's win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyr...
MIKE PENCE What if — is more complicated than that? What if maybe opposite is true as well? Because, if bad c...
DONNA TARTT The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but t...
TEJU COLE My vision for this book and the others in the series is to let people know what kind of commanders w...
TOM CLANCY We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote a...
DALTON TRUMBO Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
DON MARQUIS Women deserve to know that. Whatever their decision, they need to know what the data is.
DR. CATHY SPONG In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.
CECIL PARKINSON Tell your story to the universe and Let your actions speak LOVE.' No matter what it is.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO What that tells me is they know it is potentially going to be a bloodbath and they don't want to get...
SCOTT BUCHANAN They're a great team. The difference in knowing that you're good and being arrogant about it is that...
MARK MITCHELL One common thing about great achievers is that, they keep asking useful questions every day. They as...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR You get to the point where you're like, 'I'm just doing me, and if people don't like...
BEBE REXHA They get the attention they deserve. They were great last year. But we get the attention we deserve....
JEFF RYAN The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I...
BARBARA BOXER Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get...
DON MARQUIS 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 Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questio...
TALCOTT PARSONS Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life.
JAMES C. DOBSON How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C. As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN It's important that the people of Cherry Hill get to know their candidates and what they stand for b...
ALEXANDER WALKER We want to believe that we're invulnerable, and that people who get tricked deserve it. Well, th...
WALTER KIRN I'm tough, and you know what? New Yorkers deserve that. They work head, they fight it out, they ...
CHRISTINE QUINN I never want to get a job because I'm female. I want to get it because I earned it and I deserve...
MARY BARRA I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money t...
JAMES SUROWIECKI eople—even good, impressive people—always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything goo...
B.J. NOVAK Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. Peop...
JAMES BALDWIN Because a lot of people [who] know they're good like to keep it and hold it to themselves. They don'...
BILLY MCALLISTER There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That...
JODI PICOULT Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end...
EDWARD ALBEE People don't always get what they deserve in this world.
LEMONY SNICKET What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
CRAIG GROESCHEL People in love feel that way all the time, like they don't know what they've done to deserve each ot...
MARISA DE LOS SANTOS I know that the Iranian people are looking with great excitement to see what happens in Iraq because...
ANDREW CARD What happens is that during each project people get excited about the next project, and they want to...
BILL CAMP One thing Billy knew that most people don't know is that the longer you have a wish, the closer you ...
SARAH ADDISON ALLEN The great and the good will decide what is good for us and make sure that we get what is good for us...
NIGEL FARAGE People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the ...
SAUL ALINSKY I want everyone to know what they deserve in relationships: that they can demand equality and kindne...
OLIVIA COLMAN I believe the votes are there and I believe it is up to the people of Georgia to let their legislato...
CALVIN HILL Only after the last tree has been cut down,only after the last river has been poisoned,only after th...
THE CREE PEOPLE We want to play all 32 minutes hard. No matter what the outcome is, as long as there's a good effort...
JENIC TUMANENG The people of New Orleans deserve to know what's going on and they deserve to know their homes will ...
BILL QUIGLEY Reasons... questions... what they have in common?

- All get finded in the hard way.
DEYTH BANGER As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. thanks to Alan Bennett -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN One thing that is exciting about fashion is the surprise element. People don't know what they want. ...
MARC JACOBS 37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON That is why one day I said my game will be like the Pythagorean Theorem - hard to figure out. A lot ...
SHAQUILLE O'NEAL It's really frustrating. I watch these guys wrestle and I know they don't work as hard as I do and d...
LUKE SMITH People feel like they've worked hard and they deserve it, ... It's important for our emotional well-...
BARBARA CAPLAN Well, I think every now and again, some people deserve to get their butts chewed. Every now and agai...
JUDGE MILLS LANE The fans know what's happened to me over the past couple of years. I lost my family. I pretty mu...
HULK HOGAN People know what they want because they know what other people want.
THEODOR W. ADORNO Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic ...
JINATO HU I'm real proud of my guys. I know they wanted to come away with the win, but they played hard and th...
DOUG SCHEIDT The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.
JAMES ADAMS The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.
JAMES RANDOLPH ADAMS Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along wi...
JOYCE MEYER In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we k...
ROBERT CARO (First win) feels good for the kids. We had a tough loss last week that could have gone either way. ...
DICK BUTKUS He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what the...
E.M. FORSTER People do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. (To put it another way: When yo...
JAMES ALLEN The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you w...
BASHAR AL-ASSAD How do we get democracy at the international level? That's our problem. and it's essentially...
SUSAN GEORGE The good part about being famous is being able to help people. The hard part is every day you have t...
MICHAEL JORDAN Guys are accountable. They know what our identity is; they're hard-working and defense-minded. We wa...
GLEN GULUTZAN People want to do good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter and other technolog...
EVAN WILLIAMS We want to develop this facility, to bring some life back into it. Right now, we're new in the area....
JEFF JENKINS The important matter is freedom. When the people choose what they want, it is good for them and for ...
AKBAR HASHEMI RAFSANJANI Most young people want to get out of the environment they grow up in, move on, and do something. The...
ROBERT STIGWOOD You have to decide what you want first of all. The problem with so many people is that they do not k...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA After the third quarter I was starting to wonder. It feels good, a relief to get that first one out ...
DAVE BARRETT Their attitude is they don't want the team to get really good after they graduate. They want it to b...
BILL BOYD One is actually the democracy here, you know, people are, people assume that this election means tha...
IMRAN KHAN

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 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