All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I… — 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
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
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage?… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so… — 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
Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing… — 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
I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man… — 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
Women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and… — 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
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
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
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
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 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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
