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
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
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
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
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 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
The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry:… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority… — 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
Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they… — 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 essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the… — 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 man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight… — 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
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
![“[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/i/43b/h-l-mencken-245_argument_t-here-is-only-one-sound-argument-for-de_1268457.png)
![“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c4a/h-l-mencken-245_agents_it-the-state-has-taken-on-a-vast-mass-of_717956.png)
