The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Public
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Philosophy
Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Democracy
Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian – and at once the world becomes explicable.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Creation
Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Occupation
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Religion
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Government, Perspective, Power
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Belief
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way. Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality, and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation, and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing beyond the grave. Such childish proofs are typically theological, and they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents…
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Emotions
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Marriage
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Cynicism
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: Love, Men & Women, Women, Wishes
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Music
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Men
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Morals, Morality, Men, Honor
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
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Husbands, Marriage
The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Arguments
If you want peace, work for justice.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Justice
All government, of course, is against liberty.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Liberty
There’s no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Intelligence
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Boredom
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
Of all the forms of visible otherworldliness, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably worthless.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Architecture
Time stays, we go.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Time
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Existence, Life, Humankind, Humanity
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Soldiers, Heroes, Heroism
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
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.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Government
A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.
—H. L. Mencken
Topics: Men & Women, Women, Men
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Carl Bernstein American Journalist
- Walter Lippmann American Journalist
- Christopher Morley American Novelist, Essayist
- Heywood Broun American Journalist
- Dorothy Thompson American Journalist, Writer
- B. C. Forbes Scottish-born American Journalist
- Lincoln Steffens American Journalist
- Norman Cousins American Journalist
- James Fallows American Author
- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison American Author
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