A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank. — H. L. Mencken Care Copy Share Image
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. — H. L. Mencken Amusing 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 Beer Copy Share Image
Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched. — H. L. Mencken American literature Copy Share Image
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering… — H. L. Mencken Affair Copy Share Image
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married… — H. L. Mencken Cybersecurity 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 Agnostic Copy Share Image
The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry:… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely… — 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 Certainty 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 Absolute freedom 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 Aesthetic Copy Share Image
The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it. — H. L. Mencken Disease Copy Share Image
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. — H. L. Mencken Character Copy Share Image
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that… — H. L. Mencken Ideas Copy Share Image
The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small. — H. L. Mencken Animal Copy Share Image
The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob — H. L. Mencken Fame 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 Change Copy Share Image
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said… — H. L. Mencken Beautiful Copy Share Image
A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor — H. L. Mencken Actors Copy Share Image
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves. — H. L. Mencken Altruism Copy Share Image
Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard. — H. L. Mencken Chicago Copy Share Image
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all other men are just as easy to fool. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty. — H. L. Mencken Anglo saxon Copy Share Image
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
