H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 2

• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

  H. L. Mencken

  Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

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

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• Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hate, Women, Inspiration

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

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• The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Ideas

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• Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Suffering

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• Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, War, Party

  Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (222), 1956.

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• The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.

  H. L. Mencken

  Want, States

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• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Men, Progress

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.416, Knopf

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• A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Order

  "LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (p. 48), August 5, 1946.

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• There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will believe it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Stupid, Believe, Ideas

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• The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Hate, Patriotism

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• After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

  H. L. Mencken

  Done, Hell, Said

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• When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

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• No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Years, People, Records

  Chicago Tribune, 19 Sept. 1926.

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• The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Average

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• 

  It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Honesty, Hate

  106 Copy quote

• The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Desert, Belief

  "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (Varieties of Envy)". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1995.

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• A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Flower, Humor

  48 Copy quote

• Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

  H. L. Mencken

  God, Being Happy, Cynical

  A Mencken Chrestomathy ch. 30 (1949)

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• There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."

  H. L. Mencken

  Drinking, Two, Honest

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• You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Ocean, Sea

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• The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

  H. L. Mencken

  Courage, Fear, Men

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• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Social Taboos

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

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• Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Religion

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• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Integrity, Men

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

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• The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Common Folk, Boss

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

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