H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 3

• The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.

  H. L. Mencken

  Finals, Tests, Dogma

  H.L. Mencken (1918). “Damn”, p.74, Рипол Классик

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• One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.

  H. L. Mencken

  White, Justice, Diversity

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.271, Knopf

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• ...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Night, Mind

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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• In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sex, Fighting, Men

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• Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted

  H. L. Mencken

  Democracy, Speech, Free Speech

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• There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

  H. L. Mencken

  Differences, Voting, Made

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• The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Courage, Lying

  Notes on Democracy pt. 3 (1926)

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• Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Men, Heartless

  "Prejudices". Fourth Series,

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• Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jobs, Men, Arguing

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• The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money.

  H. L. Mencken

  Party, Office, People

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.209, Knopf

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• A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Crazy, Ignorance

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

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• A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Political, Drug

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.423, Knopf

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• Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights: the right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities, provided only that he does not try to inflict them upon others by force; he has the right to argue for them as eloquently as he can. But he has no right to be protected from the criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Rights, Challenges

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• Women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired, not because they practise a magic inherited from savagery, but simply and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance what most men could not see with searchlights and telescopes.... They are the supreme realists of the race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Race, Magic

  In Defense of Women, rev. ed., pt. 1, ch. 5 (1922)

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• The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, People, Liberty

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• A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Humor, Heaven

  "A Little Book in C Major".

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• A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Anniversary, Marriage

  H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

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• Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Art, Majority Rule

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

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• No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Enemy, Favors

  "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks". Book by H. L. Mencken, 204, 1956.

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• I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Nature, Truth

  "What I Believe". The Forum Magazine, Issue 84 (p. 139), September 1930.

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• The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

  H. L. Mencken

  Gun, Rights, Hands

  "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe". Book by H L. Mencken, 1956.

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• The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mistake, Men, Thinking

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• The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Marriage, Couple

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• If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

  H. L. Mencken

  Golf, Men, Office

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• Change is not progress.

  H. L. Mencken

  Change, Progress

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