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
A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it-… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular. — 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
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
Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and… — 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
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 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