What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United… — H. L. Mencken Newcomers Copy Share Image
No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right. — H. L. Mencken Controversial Copy Share Image
Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. — H. L. Mencken Democracy Copy Share Image
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 Envy Copy Share Image
I roll out of my couch every morning with the more agreeable expectations. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none. — H. L. Mencken Human life Copy Share Image
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them. — H. L. Mencken Bridges 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 Choices Copy Share Image
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Taxation, for example, is eternally lively; it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and… — H. L. Mencken Clarity Copy Share Image
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless… — H. L. Mencken Amusement 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,… — H. L. Mencken Agnostic Copy Share Image
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to… — H. L. Mencken Baptists Copy Share Image
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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 Baltimore Copy Share Image
The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly… — H. L. Mencken Alcohol Copy Share Image
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian… — H. L. Mencken Assumption Copy Share Image
Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded… — H. L. Mencken Antiquity Copy Share Image
I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads. — H. L. Mencken Freedom Copy Share Image
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an… — H. L. Mencken Good sign Copy Share Image
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins. — H. L. Mencken Belief Copy Share Image
Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. — H. L. Mencken Effort Copy Share Image
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a… — H. L. Mencken Brain 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
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. — H. L. Mencken Art 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
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character. — H. L. Mencken Character Copy Share Image
Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
![“[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f18/h-l-mencken-245_controversial_a-formula-for-answering-controversial-le_2795484.jpg)
![“All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c9f/h-l-mencken-245_amusement_all-zoos-actually-offer-to-the-public-in_2331099.png)
![“Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a51/h-l-mencken-245_all-time_since-the-early-days-the-church-has-thro_2325142.png)
