H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 6

• Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Literature, Dignity

  15 Copy quote

• The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Bills, Troops

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.254, Knopf

  13 Copy quote

• What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

  H. L. Mencken

  Leadership, Men, Rights

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.34, Knopf

  19 Copy quote

• The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Enemy, Politics

  38 Copy quote

• It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

  H. L. Mencken

  Uprising, Leader, Causes

  26 Copy quote

• The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Truth, Errors, Discovery

  "Prejudices: Third Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

  20 Copy quote

• [Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Population, Citizens

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.147, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Would Be, Disease, Way

  14 Copy quote

• the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Average

  32 Copy quote

• Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate...Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Government, Psychology

  9 Copy quote

• All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Essence, Voting

  "The Constitution". Baltimore Evening Sun, August 19, 1935.

  31 Copy quote

• Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Funny, Marriage

  82 Copy quote

• Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracy, Liberty

  9 Copy quote

• An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Food, Vegetables

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

  70 Copy quote

• Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, War, Government

  10 Copy quote

• The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Latin, Believe

  18 Copy quote

• Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sunday, Heaven, Wish

  "A little book in C major".

  17 Copy quote

• Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Anniversary, Marriage

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

  27 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Sex, Fighting, Men

  6 Copy quote

• The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.248, Cosimo, Inc.

  41 Copy quote

• Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Government, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.207, Knopf

  20 Copy quote

• Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn

  H. L. Mencken

  Independence, Foundation, Economic

  10 Copy quote

• I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.

  H. L. Mencken

  Profound, Expectations, Noble

  63 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

  H. L. Mencken

  Truth, Lying, Believe

  11 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

George Jean Nathan

Friedrich Nietzsche

Mark Twain

Clarence Darrow

Sinclair Lewis

Ambrose Bierce

John T. Scopes

Will Rogers