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
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
Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly… — 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
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 essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that… — 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
By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not… — 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 argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to… — 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
The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular,… — 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 is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.” 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)
![“Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a51/h-l-mencken-245_all-time_since-the-early-days-the-church-has-thro_2325142.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)
