Ideas Quotes by H. L. Mencken

31 Ideas quotes by H. L. Mencken

Mencken’s razor‑sharp wit cuts through pretension, exposing the absurdities hidden in popular concepts. Expect a blend of cynicism and insight that challenges conventional thinking.

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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

H. L. Mencken

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Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

H. L. Mencken

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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

H. L. Mencken

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There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will believe it.

H. L. Mencken

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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I…

H. L. Mencken

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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be…

H. L. Mencken

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To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that…

H. L. Mencken

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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There…

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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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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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true…

H. L. Mencken

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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other…

H. L. Mencken

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The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a…

H. L. Mencken

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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written…

H. L. Mencken

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The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In…

H. L. Mencken

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No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help…

H. L. Mencken

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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be,…

H. L. Mencken

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When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men…

H. L. Mencken

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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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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

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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all…

H. L. Mencken

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What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by…

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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