H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 4

• School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, School, Boys

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.308, Vintage

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• Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Intimidation, Made

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.260, Vintage

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• Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

  H. L. Mencken

  Reflection, Enemy, Democracy

  "Liberty and Democracy". Baltimore Evening Sun (April 13, 1925) as quoted in "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit" edited by Terry Teachout (p. 35), 1994.

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• Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.

  H. L. Mencken

  Matter, Decorum, Should

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• [T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fighting, Government, People

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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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• Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Character, United States

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• Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Men, Civilization

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• It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Knowing, Historical

  Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun, The Impossible Mencken, June 29, 1925.

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• The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Humor, Criminals

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

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• The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Average, Special

  Baltimore Evening Sun, February 12, 1923.

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• [The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. 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 and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowledge, Independent, Science

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• A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Law, Justice

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• [Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Discovery, Liberty

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• For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.

  H. L. Mencken

  World, Littles, Truth Seekers

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• The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Philosophy, Ideas

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• Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Lamps, Journalism

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• Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, People, Liberty

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.172, Knopf

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• There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, People, Giving

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

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• Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Government, Years

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• Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Honesty, Mistake

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• The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Freedom, Democracy

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• The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very
  friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Numbers, Race, Leader

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.213, Knopf

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• On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Hilarious, Women

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

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• I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Wise, Believe

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