A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation. — H. L. Mencken Gentleman Copy Share Image
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain, — H. L. Mencken Alcohol Copy Share Image
Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas. — H. L. Mencken America Copy Share Image
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. — H. L. Mencken American public Copy Share Image
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought. — H. L. Mencken Agnosticism Copy Share Image
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic. — H. L. Mencken Demand Copy Share Image
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. — H. L. Mencken Frauds Copy Share Image
The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated. — H. L. Mencken Actor Copy Share Image
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful.… — H. L. Mencken Architecture Copy Share Image
The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I… — H. L. Mencken Criticism Copy Share Image
One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many… — H. L. Mencken Compromise Copy Share Image
During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice… — H. L. Mencken Denmark Copy Share Image
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits… — H. L. Mencken Art Copy Share Image
At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash… — H. L. Mencken Bartender 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 Art 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 Assurance 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 Absurdity Copy Share Image
It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And… — H. L. Mencken Assurance Copy Share Image
The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack. — H. L. Mencken Baptists Copy Share Image
