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
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Wisdom
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
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Money
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Democracy, Government
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Choice
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Gossip
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Pleasure
Before a man speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks it is seldom necessary to assume.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Speakers, Speaking
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Doubt
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: War
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing
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: Teachers, Education, Teaching
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Golf
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: 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
Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Opera
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Religion
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Love
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Marriage
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Class
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Men
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Work
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 a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Education
If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Golf
Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Voting
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Family
A judge is a law student who grades his own papers.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Law, Lawyers
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Cynicism
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Innovation, Originality
A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
—H. L. Mencken
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