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Inspirational Quotes by H. L. Mencken

52 Inspirational quotes by H. L. Mencken

All Inspirational quotes H. L. Mencken’s page

Mencken mocks the idea that philosophers can be happy and calls religion a pile of garbage. He points out that truth often makes people uncomfortable. He also criticizes humanitarians who exaggerate others’ suffering. He also jokes that dull writers, not dull subjects, cause boredom.

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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.

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Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

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The Americans are the illegitimate children of the English.

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Anyhow, the hole in the donut is at least digestible.

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There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

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He who eats alone chokes alone.

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It is only doubt that creates.

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No man ever quite believes in any other man.

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If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God.

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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.

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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.

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Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly.

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Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong...

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Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.

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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.

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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what…

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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

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I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free…

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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it-…

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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of…

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Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely…

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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.

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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

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Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing

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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.

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Wherever I sit is the head of the table.

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There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.

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How do they taste? They taste like more.

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Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.

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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.

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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.

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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.

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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.

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I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more.

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More by H. L. Mencken

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

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

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.…

So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free…

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

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

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

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must…

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend…

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own…

To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue…

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

For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not…