People Quotes by H. L. Mencken

Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.

— H. L. Mencken

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

— H. L. Mencken

Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

— H. L. Mencken

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.

— H. L. Mencken

There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.

— H. L. Mencken

I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.

— H. L. Mencken

A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have…

— H. L. Mencken

[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for…

— H. L. Mencken

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

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who…

— H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

— H. L. Mencken

The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn…

— H. L. Mencken

Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.

— H. L. Mencken

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects…

— H. L. Mencken

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men…

— H. L. Mencken

People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is…

— H. L. Mencken

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

There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering…

— H. L. Mencken

People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government,…

— H. L. Mencken

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of…

— H. L. Mencken

“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help…

— H. L. Mencken

The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under…

— H. L. Mencken

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash…

— H. L. Mencken

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help…

— H. L. Mencken

The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial…

— H. L. Mencken

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

Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody…

— H. L. Mencken

To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the…

— H. L. Mencken

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed…

— H. L. Mencken

Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts…

— H. L. Mencken

The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it…

— H. L. Mencken

The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do…

— H. L. Mencken

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack…

— H. L. Mencken

The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even,…

— H. L. Mencken

There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting…

— H. L. Mencken

If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person…

— H. L. Mencken