The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way… — 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;… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the… — 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
The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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
Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead… — 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 government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws… There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share