H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 17

• Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

  H. L. Mencken

  Missing You, Ocean, Men

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• The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Courage, Men

  "The Baltimore Sun" Newspaper, February 12, 1923.

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• The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Age, Flags

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Men, Machines

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.26, Knopf

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• Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Class, People, Leader

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• A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Envy, Imbeciles

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.163, Vintage

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• No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dream, Children, Heart

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.325, Vintage

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• The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Medicine, Hygiene

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.12, Vintage

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• No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Waiting, Temptation

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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• The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gentleman, Facts, Communism

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.21, Knopf

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• All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Jobs, Issues

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• The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Ymca, World

  Prejudices, First Series ch. 16 (1919)

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• The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.

  H. L. Mencken

  Grief, Banking, Pestilence

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• The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Men, Wife

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• A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Society, Original Thought, Literature

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

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• If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

  H. L. Mencken

  Average, Democracy, United States

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• I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Funny, Humor

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• It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jobs, Lying, Trying

  "Notes on Democracy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1926.

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• No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.

  H. L. Mencken

  Truth, Law, Ideas

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.382, Knopf

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• Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.

  H. L. Mencken

  Struggle, Hypocrite, Men

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• Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dream, Heaven, Democracy

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.412, Knopf

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• Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Anniversary, Marriage, Husband

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• Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Politics, Entertainment

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• I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized
  society.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Speech

  "What I Believe", The Forum 84 (p. 139), September, 1930.

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• I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Race, Discovery

  "What I Believe" by H. L. Mencken, The Forum (American magazine), Volume 84 (p. 139), September 1930.

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