The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense. — 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
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight… — 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 Copy Share Image
Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor… — 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
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
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
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
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
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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
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
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
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 Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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 Copy Share
![“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c4a/h-l-mencken-245_agents_it-the-state-has-taken-on-a-vast-mass-of_717956.png)
