H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 17

• The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Army, House

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

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• Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sleep, Men, Imagination

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.23, Vintage

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• 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 day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, War, Next Day

  American Mercury, Apr. 1928

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• It seems to me that you are better off, as a writer and as an American, in a small town than you'd be in New York. I thoroughly detest New York, though I have to go there very often.... Have you ever noticed that no American writer of any consequence lives in Manhattan? Dreiser tried it (after many years in the Bronx), but finally moved to California.

  H. L. Mencken

  New York, Years, California

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• Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hate, Race, Lust

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.576, Vintage

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• As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far - much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Food, Long

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• Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Temptation, Weapons

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

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• The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog

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• Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law. The States are charged with punishing all such invasions as the common rights of the citizens, but some of them have failed in their effort to do so, and others have not honestly tried. Meanwhile, lynchings continue, and though they do not increase in number, they show some tendency to increase in savagery.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Lynching, Law

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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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• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Faith, Freedom, Believe

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 14 (1922)

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• 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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• Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

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• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Believe, Religion

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

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• Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Enough Time, Would Be

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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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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