H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 14

• A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Land, Done

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 3 (1916)

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• New York: A third-rate Babylon.

  H. L. Mencken

  New York, Babylon, Rate

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• Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Hands, Long

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.277, Knopf

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• The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Mistake, Writing

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• Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Father, Thinking

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• For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.

  H. L. Mencken

  House, Would Be, Ill

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• You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Change, Wisdom

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• There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Smart, Two, Kind

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• I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Democracy, Amusing, Enjoy

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.168, Vintage

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• A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

  H. L. Mencken

  Couple, Political, Baptism

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• The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Average

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, May, Belief

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.11, Vintage

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• If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Law

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.344, Vintage

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• The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Prayer, Attitude

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.312, Knopf

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• There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Music, Humorous

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• It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

  H. L. Mencken

  Faith, Men, Dull

  H.L. Mencken (1920). “Prejudices Second Series”

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• Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

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• Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Hero, Four

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.221, Vintage

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• It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Race, Years

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.57, See Sharp Press

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• What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Answers, World, Idiot

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.180, Knopf

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• If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Average, Made

  "In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality".

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• The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, School, Sunday

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.202, Vintage

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• A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Self, Rome

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• It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Men, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.371, Knopf

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• Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Long Ago

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