Heard Quotes by H. L. Mencken

10 Heard quotes by H. L. Mencken

Mencken’s razor‑sharp commentary on the world’s clamor lands in these ten short lines. Expect his characteristic wit, delivered without any filler.

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The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

H. L. Mencken

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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of…

H. L. Mencken

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Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple,…

H. L. Mencken

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No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether…

H. L. Mencken

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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a…

H. L. Mencken

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Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority…

H. L. Mencken

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This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say…

H. L. Mencken

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Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded…

H. L. Mencken

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

H. L. Mencken

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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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