Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix, and God. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Osteopath--One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity,… — 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
![“[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/774/h-l-mencken-245_contribution_government-s-great-contribution-to-human_2023094.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
