To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10, 000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.


H. L. Mencken

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More H. L. Mencken

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
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Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
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A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
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I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
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Time stays, we go.
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A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
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The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
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Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
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All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will b...
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The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surm...
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The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
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There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
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Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
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I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
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If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led t...
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We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that ...
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It is a sin to believe in the evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
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Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
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One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will...
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The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
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A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regar...
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards ce...
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better...
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
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Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are ...
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Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
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There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.
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Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
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The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which ...
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Alimony -- the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certaint...
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes...
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
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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