The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The great masses of men, though theoretically free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent sorts.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues,… — 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
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
