Character Quotes by H. L. Mencken

29 Character quotes by H. L. Mencken

All Character quotes H. L. Mencken’s page

Mencken’s razor‑sharp wit slices through pretensions in twenty‑nine memorable lines. His skeptical eye and sardonic humor lay bare the contradictions of human nature, making for a lively, thought‑provoking read.

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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.

H. L. Mencken

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The worst government is the most moral.

H. L. Mencken

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Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.

H. L. Mencken

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Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

H. L. Mencken

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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

H. L. Mencken

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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

H. L. Mencken

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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what…

H. L. Mencken

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Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

H. L. Mencken

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Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

H. L. Mencken

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Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.

H. L. Mencken

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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

H. L. Mencken

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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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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

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We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had…

H. L. Mencken

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No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian,…

H. L. Mencken

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Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known…

H. L. Mencken

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[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks…

H. L. Mencken

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All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that…

H. L. Mencken

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The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the…

H. L. Mencken

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What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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“The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human…

H. L. Mencken

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Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or…

H. L. Mencken

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It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

H. L. Mencken

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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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