H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 18

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Funny, Humor

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  6 Copy quote

• In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes.

  H. L. Mencken

  Eye, Wind, Office

  6 Copy quote

• The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Weakness, Tails

  8 Copy quote

• A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Happiness, Lying, Home

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

  21 Copy quote

• To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Thinking, Answers

  9 Copy quote

• Anyhow, the hole in the donut is at least digestible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Food, Holes, Donuts

  4 Copy quote

• Why do men go to zoos?

  H. L. Mencken

  Zoos, Men, Atheism

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

  8 Copy quote

• Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Men, Iron

  "More Tips for Novelists". "Chicago Tribune" Newspaper, May 2, 1926.

  7 Copy quote

• New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, New York, Powerful

  7 Copy quote

• All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Food, Men, Cooking

  14 Copy quote

• On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Religious, Ignorance

  8 Copy quote

• For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

  H. L. Mencken

  Trust, Marriage, Mutual Interest

  7 Copy quote

• What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?

  H. L. Mencken

  Voting, Democracy, Doctrine

  5 Copy quote

• To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Average, People

  "H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism".

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

George Jean Nathan

Friedrich Nietzsche

Mark Twain

Clarence Darrow

Sinclair Lewis

Ambrose Bierce

John T. Scopes

Will Rogers