The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I ever mary, it will be on a suddn impulse - as aman shoots himself — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so… — 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
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 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
If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against… — 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