H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 15

• The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Religion, Occupation

  Prejudices (1926).

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• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Respect, Religious

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honest. There is little support for that theory in known facts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Integrity, Men, Average

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• If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Coward, Doe

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.124, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is always a sheet of paper. There is always a pen. There is always a way out.

  H. L. Mencken

  Paper, Way, Sheets

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.29, Knopf

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• The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religion, Atheism, Proof

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.311, Knopf

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• If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Democracy, Politics, Honest

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Artist, Trying, Incompetence

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.564, Vintage

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• A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Passion, Humor, Patriotic

  "H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series".

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• Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Democracy, Herds

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• Remorse - Regret that one waited so long to do it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Regret, Long

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Believe, Forever

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• Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Immortality

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• For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Men, Practice

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• All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.

  H. L. Mencken

  Order, Religion, Atheism

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.89, Vintage

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• Evil is that which one believes of others.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Evil

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.

  H. L. Mencken

  Framed, Hypothesis, Accounts

  "The American Mercury" Magazine, February 1926.

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• The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gossip, Indignant, Doings

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• Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Happiness, Marriage, Men

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• The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

  H. L. Mencken

  Marriage, Wedding, Men

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Two, Race, Class

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• The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Editors, Common Sense, Giving

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• When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sympathy, Women, Two

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

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• As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Hate, Heart

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• In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Real, Women

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

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