H. L. Mencken Quotes

• On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Heart, Land

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

  340 Copy quote
• 

  The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.29, Vintage

  194 Copy quote

• The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Success, Truth, Liars

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

  131 Copy quote

• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, People

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 2 (1916)

  50 Copy quote

• The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Office

  "Charting the Candidates '72" by Ronald Van Doren, 1972.

  160 Copy quote

• It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Classic, Moron

  72 Copy quote

• The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

  135 Copy quote

• People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

  H. L. Mencken

  Cheating, Honesty, Lying

  122 Copy quote

• Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

  H. L. Mencken

  Motivational, Religion, Atheism

  187 Copy quote

• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Cynical, Doctrine

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.76, Knopf

  222 Copy quote

• For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Simple, Ethics

  100 Copy quote

• Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Badass, Anger

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  137 Copy quote

• There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligence, Underestimate

  26 Copy quote

• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Social Taboos

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

  185 Copy quote

• Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Cynical, Idiot

  56 Copy quote

• When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

  H. L. Mencken

  38 Copy quote

• The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

  H. L. Mencken

  Educational, Simple, Ideas

  H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.222, Regnery Publishing

  55 Copy quote

• Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won't. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.

  H. L. Mencken

  America, Judging, Decay

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

  15 Copy quote

• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Ignorance, Majority Rule

  "Notes On Journalism". Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926.

  133 Copy quote

• The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

  H. L. Mencken

  Pride, Men, Vanity

  44 Copy quote

• Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Hate, Religion

  30 Copy quote

• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

  H. L. Mencken

  Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

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

  46 Copy quote

• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Men, Progress

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.416, Knopf

  45 Copy quote

• If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

  80 Copy quote

• When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

  109 Copy quote

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