Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, editor, literary critic, and historian of language. He became celebrated as an iconoclastic critic of American society and frequently condemned its Puritanism and hypocrisy.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Mencken became editor of the Baltimore Herald, and then joined the Sunpapers in 1906. He worked with the Smart Set 1908–23. With the drama critic George Jean Nathan, Mencken founded the American Mercury in 1924, which Mencken edited until 1933.
Mencken became a significant influence on the American literary scene of the 1920s and supported many writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. Mencken’s primary work is The American Language (1919, revised 1921, 1923, 1936; supplementary volumes, 1945, 1948,) wherein he opposed the dominance of European culture in America. This momentous attempt to organize the vigor and versatility of colloquial American usage made Mencken the leading authority on the language of his country.
Mencken’s reviews of American social and cultural norms and miscellaneous essays filled six volumes appropriately titled Prejudices (1919–27.) His autobiographical trilogy, Happy Days (1940,) Newspaper Days (1941,) and Heathen Days (1943,) is devoted to his experiences in journalism.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by H. L. Mencken
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
Topics: Religion, Churches
A judge is a law student who grades his own papers.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Law, Lawyers
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
Topics: Gratitude
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness…. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever…. I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Death, Immortality, Authority
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, are right
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Democracy
The thing which sets off the American from all other men, and gives peculiar color not only to the pattern of his daily life but also adds to the play of his inner ideas, is what, for want of a more exact term, may be called social aspiration
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Aspirations
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Patriotism
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Doubt
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Men
Time stays, we go.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Time
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Men & Women, Love, Women, Wishes
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Cynicism
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Thinking
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Religion
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air, that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Government
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.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Thinking
The more a man dreams, the less he believes
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Dreams
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Justice
Conscience: The inner voice which warns us that someone is looking.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Conscience
The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits
—H. L. Mencken
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Marriage
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
—H. L. Mencken
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Laziness, Idleness
Every government is a scoundrel
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Government
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear—fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Safety, Security, Anxiety, Fear
The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essentially and next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation?
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Teaching, Education, Teachers
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
—H. L. Mencken
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
Topics: Deception/Lying
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth—that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Assumptions
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Work, Stress
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Government
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Prejudice
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Self Respect, Self-respect
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Oppression
The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which operate the lower animals, is ridiculously unjust to them. The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Dogs
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Democracy
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Liberty
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Trust
The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Depression
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