I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it… — 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