« All War Quotes · H. L. Mencken's Page
War Quotes by H. L. Mencken
- When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they…
- Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.
- The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits
- In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.
- The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy,…
- To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
- All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more…
- The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged.
- Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next…
- This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
- War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net…
- We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small…
- Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
- The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a…
- I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
- War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
- In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
- Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of…
- Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and…
- The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to…
- Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. --H. L. Mencken
More War Quotes
- War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford. — Hannah Arendt
- The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error. — Hannah Arendt
- As a kid, 'Star Wars' was much more my thing than 'Star Trek' was. — J. J. Abrams
- Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of… — Aristophanes
- We make war that we may live in peace. — Aristotle
- Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have… — Karen Armstrong
- These people were well dressed in skins, had some guns, but armed generally with bows and arrows and such other instruments of… — William Henry Ashley
- Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. — Isaac Asimov
- John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only… — Isaac Asimov
- We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents… — Julian Assange
- What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend… — Julian Assange
- War is what happens when language fails. — Margaret Atwood