Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As for Lindbergh, another eminent servant of science, all he proved by his gaudy flight across the Atlantic was that God takes… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries -… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind… — 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 truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help… — 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
To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can… — 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
![“There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a0c/h-l-mencken-245_agents_there-is-it-appears-a-conspiracy-of-scie_2731885.png)
