Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of… — H. L. Mencken Anniversary Copy Share Image
The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine hard to distinguish from… — H. L. Mencken Art Copy Share Image
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants… — H. L. Mencken Emotion Copy Share Image
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are… — H. L. Mencken Achievement Copy Share Image
The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is… — H. L. Mencken Character 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 Character Copy Share Image
It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but… — H. L. Mencken Affair Copy Share Image
No married woman ever trusts her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she did trust him. Her utmost confidence… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of… — H. L. Mencken Cad Copy Share Image
A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy… — H. L. Mencken Contempt Copy Share Image
If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional… — H. L. Mencken Corruption Copy Share Image
The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as… — H. L. Mencken Autonomous Copy Share Image
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The… — H. L. Mencken Character Copy Share Image
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful… — H. L. Mencken Aspiration Copy Share Image
The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to… — H. L. Mencken Argument Copy Share Image
No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world.… — 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 Bureaucrat Copy Share Image
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops… — H. L. Mencken Bill of rights Copy Share Image
![“[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/0ec/h-l-mencken-245_autonomous_government-is-apprehended-not-as-a-commi_1115230.jpg)
