The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No sane man objects to palpable lies about him; what he objects to is damaging facts. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent… — 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
No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Two simple principles lie at the bottom of the whole matter, and they may be precipitated into two rules. The first is… — 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
![“It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f30/h-l-mencken-245_business_it-is-a-politician-s-business-to-get-and_410481.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
