The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
![“The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/2a3/h-l-mencken-245_american-people_the-american-people-north-and-south-went_2057722.png)
