The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 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
On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he… — 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
The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether… — 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
![“It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f30/h-l-mencken-245_business_it-is-a-politician-s-business-to-get-and_410481.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)
