All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style;… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Image
The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin or when he sees silver he looks… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. — 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
