H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  91 Copy quote

• 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

  39 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Flower, Humor

  48 Copy quote

• If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

  74 Copy quote

• 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.

  42 Copy quote

• The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Learning, Liberty

  The American Mercury Magazine, April 24, 1924.

  108 Copy quote

• Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Freedom, Political

  33 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Suffering

  57 Copy quote
• 

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Want, States

  66 Copy quote

• 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.

  46 Copy quote

• 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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• When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

  H. L. Mencken

  36 Copy quote

• 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.

  109 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)

  107 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.

  33 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Drinking, Two, Honest

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Hate, Religion

  30 Copy quote

• 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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• 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.

  78 Copy quote

• 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.

  26 Copy quote

• 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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• Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won't. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.

  H. L. Mencken

  America, Judging, Decay

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.254, Knopf

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