- A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
-H. L. Mencken
- A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for the coffin
-H. L. Mencken
- A home is not mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.
-H. L. Mencken
- A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
-H. L. Mencken
- All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
-H. L. Mencken
- An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
-H. L. Mencken
- Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
-H. L. Mencken
- Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-H. L. Mencken
- Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
-H. L. Mencken
- Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-H. L. Mencken
- Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
-H. L. Mencken
- Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
-H. L. Mencken
- Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
-H. L. Mencken
- Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable.
-H. L. Mencken
- For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
-H. L. Mencken
- For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations to 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
- Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
-H. L. Mencken
- I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
-H. L. Mencken
- In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
-H. L. Mencken
- Injustice is relatively easy to bear, what stings is justice.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
-H. L. Mencken
- It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
-H. L. Mencken
- The worst government is often 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
- There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
-H. L. Mencken
- Democracy is the theory that two thieves will steal less than one, and three less than two, and four less than three, and so on ad infinitum.
-H. L. Mencken
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Last Updated 1/6/2021 12:13:05 AM