A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior… — 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
The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style;… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple… — 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
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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
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
![“[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/43b/h-l-mencken-245_argument_t-here-is-only-one-sound-argument-for-de_1268457.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact…” 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)
