Time Quotes by H. L. Mencken

34 Time quotes by H. L. Mencken

Mencken’s wit slices through pretensions, especially when he turns his sarcasm toward the relentless march of days. This collection showcases his knack for exposing absurdities with a dry, intellectual humor.

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Time stays, we go.

H. L. Mencken

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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.

H. L. Mencken

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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

H. L. Mencken

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The only time you have a free press is when you own one.

H. L. Mencken

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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

H. L. Mencken

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It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby…

H. L. Mencken

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I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only…

H. L. Mencken

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A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

H. L. Mencken

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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

H. L. Mencken

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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

H. L. Mencken

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A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred…

H. L. Mencken

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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black…

H. L. Mencken

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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches,…

H. L. Mencken

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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a…

H. L. Mencken

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Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one…

H. L. Mencken

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Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the…

H. L. Mencken

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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite…

H. L. Mencken

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It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent…

H. L. Mencken

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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of…

H. L. Mencken

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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.

H. L. Mencken

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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

H. L. Mencken

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I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly forty-five years. It has changed in that time, as I have -…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally,…

H. L. Mencken

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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

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

H. L. Mencken

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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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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

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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

H. L. Mencken

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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

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