A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting. — 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
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Two simple principles lie at the bottom of the whole matter, and they may be precipitated into two rules. The first is… — 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… — 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
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
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the… — 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