H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 13

• Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Humor, Champion

  Baltimore Evening Sun, April 4, 1927.

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• All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid stages to the level of sheer morons. Everyone knows that this is true of government, but we often forget that it is equally true of private undertakings. In the average great bank, or railroad, or other corporation the burden of management lies upon a small group. The rest are ciphers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Smart, Lying

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.121, Knopf

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• A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

  H. L. Mencken

  Family, Children, School

  H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

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• The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Horse, Ignorance

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• The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.

  H. L. Mencken

  Bible, Biblical, Blood

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• The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Years, Fifty

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• All government, of course, is against liberty.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Liberty, Courses

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• Christian - One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Wife, Religion

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wicked, Example, Pay

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• Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Race, Ideas

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• Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.

  H. L. Mencken

  Friendship, Belief, Common

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

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• Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Believe, Knowledge

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.363, Knopf

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• All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history of armed combat such affairs as the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars must be ranked, not as wars at all, but as organized assassinations. In the two World Wars, no American faced a bullet until his adversaries had been worn down by years of fighting others.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, War, Fighting

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• Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Heart, Car

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• 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 apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Men, Law

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• Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Men, Support

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• No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Government, Class

  "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks". Book by H. L. Mencken (p. 33), 1956.

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• Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowing, Effort, Literature

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• Women hate revolutions and revolutionists. They like men who are docile, and well-regarded at the bank, and never late at meals.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hate, Men, Meals

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

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• War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

  H. L. Mencken

  Baby, Peace, War

  'Minority Report'. Collected in Notebooks (1956).

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• In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Book, Reading

  "A little book in C major".

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• The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.

  H. L. Mencken

  Looks, Way, Politician

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• There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religion, Liberty, Morality

  "A little book in C major".

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• 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 war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, War, Men

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• 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 war as an endless standing in line.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Spiritual, War

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.131, Vintage

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