A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 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
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. — 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
[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 Copy Share Image
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 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… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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
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
![“Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/159/h-l-mencken-245_jew_better-than-the-rest-of-us-they-the-jews_3199611.jpg)
![“The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/2a3/h-l-mencken-245_american-people_the-american-people-north-and-south-went_2057722.jpg)
![“[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b4e/h-l-mencken-245_abraham_t-he-only-thing-wrong-with-abraham-linco_1672393.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)
