H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way…

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

— H. L. Mencken

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which…

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary,…

— H. L. Mencken

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

— H. L. Mencken

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

To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the…

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it…

— H. L. Mencken

There comes a day of public ceremonial, and a chance to make a speech.... A million voters with IQs below 60 have…

— H. L. Mencken

The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that…

— H. L. Mencken

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he…

— H. L. Mencken

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

— H. L. Mencken

If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and…

— H. L. Mencken

Wife: a former sweetheart.

— H. L. Mencken

I roll out of my couch every morning with the more agreeable expectations.

— H. L. Mencken

All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor…

— H. L. Mencken

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There…

— H. L. Mencken

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other…

— H. L. Mencken