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
What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts almost as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they… — 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
Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Consider... the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge… — 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
