H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 20

• Haste is of the devil. Slowness is of God.

  H. L. Mencken

  Devil, Haste, Slowness

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• Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Real, Math, Bridges

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• If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Achieve, Prodigies

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.268, Vintage

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• The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

  H. L. Mencken

  Opinion, Cigar, Worst

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• The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.

  H. L. Mencken

  Evil, Democracy, Doctrine

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• The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Class, Trying

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• One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

  H. L. Mencken

  Prejudice, Literature, World

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

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• A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Father, Views

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.537, Vintage

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• Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Hard Times, Law

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.40, Vintage

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• This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Struggle, Two

  "The Antichrist". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, Introduction, 1895.

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• Nietzsche, to the end of his days, remained a Russian pastor's son, and hence two-thirds of a Puritan; he erected his war upon holiness, toward the end, into a sort of holy war.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Philosophical, Son

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• A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Democracy, Liberty

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• War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

  H. L. Mencken

  Military, War, Mean

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.23, Knopf

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• There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Dull, Subjects

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• The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.

  H. L. Mencken

  Secret, Brain, May

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• One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Laughter, Anger

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

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• A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Men, Years

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• What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, Play, Toys

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.281, Vintage

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• When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fun, Artist, Thinking

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• The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Science, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.248, Knopf

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• Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Relationship, Marriage

  Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30

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• Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Experience, Poor

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• There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.

  H. L. Mencken

  Promise, Politician, Pot

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• Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Party, Choices

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.159, Vintage

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