H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 28

• Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place

  H. L. Mencken

  Confidence, Lying, Believe

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• In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

  H. L. Mencken

  Victory, Moral, Disaster

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.199, Vintage

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• It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Art, Society

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.562, Vintage

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• [Art is] an attempt to escape from life.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Art Is

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• Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Awkward, Sodium

  H.L. Mencken (1917). “A book of prefaces”, p.86, Рипол Классик

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• Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hygiene, Medicine, Morality

  Prejudices Types of Men

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• No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.

  H. L. Mencken

  Trust, Believe, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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• By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.

  H. L. Mencken

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

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• Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Progress, Whiskers

  "A Book of Burlesques". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1916.

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• The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular.

  H. L. Mencken

  Spiritual, Military, War

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• The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Support, Liberty

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• I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.

  H. L. Mencken

  Teacher, Determination, School

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.260, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, War, Teaching

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• I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Drink, Enjoy, Alcoholics

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• Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.

  H. L. Mencken

  Feet, Shining, May

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

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• What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Nature, Forgotten, Danger

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.347, Vintage

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• Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, True Love, First Love

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• Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence; it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.

  H. L. Mencken

  Eye, May, Youth

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• No married woman ever trusts her husband absolutely, nor does she ever act as if she did trust him. Her utmost confidence is as wary as an American pickpocket's confidence that the policeman on the beat will stay bought.

  H. L. Mencken

  Trust, Husband, Women

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.267, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Shy, Literature

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• No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Ideas

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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• Only to often on meeting scientific men, even those of genuine distiction, one finds that they are dull fellows and very stupid. They know one thing to excess; they know nothing else. Pursuing facts too doggedly and unimaginatively, they miss all the charming things that are not facts. ... Too much learning, like too little learning, is an unpleasant and dangerous thing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Stupid, Knowledge, Science

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• They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Freedom, Taken

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• The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Strong, Fake, Support

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

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• The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Political, Campaigns

  "Mencken Chrestomathy".

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