What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style;… — H. L. Mencken 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
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants… — 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