One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence.… — 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
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue. — 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
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
Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true. — 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
I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so… — H. L. Mencken 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
Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 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
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 Image
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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