To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong. — 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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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 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 Copy Share Image
The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There… — 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 Copy Share Image
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 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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
[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 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
![“[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/371/h-l-mencken-245_all-time_thomas-henry-huxley-i-believe-was-the-gr_3218889.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
