H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 29

• There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fear, Cutting, Men

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• Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Perseverance, Belief, Impossible

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

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• Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Effort, Resistance

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

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• [Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.

  H. L. Mencken

  White, House, Cannibalism

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• The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Government, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.91, Knopf

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• The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Way, Flattering

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.29, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Men, People

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

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• A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic.

  H. L. Mencken

  Change, Loyalty, Time

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.316, Vintage

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• I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Political, Slavery

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

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• Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hero, Eye, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.27, Knopf

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• To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Russia, Evil

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• Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Safety, Fool

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• A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Men, Special

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

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• Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Problem, Complexes

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• The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips is really not any thirst for knowledge, but simply a yearning for adventure. ... A Polar explorer always talks grandly of sacrificing his fingers and toes to science. It is an amiable pretention, but there is no need to take it seriously.

  H. L. Mencken

  Adventure, Sacrifice, Men

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• An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Artist, Self

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.466, Vintage

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• The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?

  H. L. Mencken

  Artist, Years, Today

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• That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Prejudice, Arguing

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.7, 谷月社

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• The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.

  H. L. Mencken

  Study, Appearance, Cases

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• Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wine, Character, Men

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• Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

  H. L. Mencken

  Music, Home, Musician

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• No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Honor

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.26, Knopf

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• I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts almost as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H. L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Giving, Feelings

  "For the Defense Written for the Associated Press, for use in my obituary" by H. L. Mencken, November 20, 1940.

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• The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good to the one good of his arcanum - the vague body of mysteries that he calls the truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sacrifice, Men, Atheism

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• Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

  H. L. Mencken

  Party, Past, Political

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