H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 18

• 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

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Food, Holes, Donuts

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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.

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Thinking, Answers

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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".

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• Wife: a former sweetheart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wife, Sweetheart, Former

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• 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

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• 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

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• What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain fact is that, if it be suitably selective, it is extremely salubrious. Suppose it could be so arranged that it ran to 100% a year among politicians, executive secretaries, drive chairmen, and the homicidally insane? What rational man would object?

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Years

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

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• An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Sorry, Would Be

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• Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Jobs, Society

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

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• There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Too Much

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• It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Doubt, Minorities

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.94, See Sharp Press

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• Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Play, Ideas, Democracy

  In Defense of Women, rev. ed., introduction (1922)

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• It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage, and soon or late it conquers them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Winning, Wings, Free Spirit

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• The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.

  H. L. Mencken

  World, Unjust, Motive

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

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• Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Doubt, Vote

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• The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.

  H. L. Mencken

  Philosophical, Boys, Men

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• It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Men, Kidneys

  "Prejudices". Fourth Series,

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