Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously. — 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
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful. — 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