Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men… — 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
Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights: the right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities, provided only that he does not… — 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 kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from… — 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 human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It 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
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
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
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
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
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
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
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
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
To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share
![“[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/371/h-l-mencken-245_all-time_thomas-henry-huxley-i-believe-was-the-gr_3218889.png)
