In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry:… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that… — 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
The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Nietzsche, to the end of his days, remained a Russian pastor's son, and hence two-thirds of a Puritan; he erected his war… — 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
The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting… — 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
Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between… — 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
![“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)
![“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)
