Writer · American · 1880 – 1956 · 148 quotes
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H. L. Mencken
Writer · American · 1880 – 1956
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
All government, of course, is against liberty.
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
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.
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
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.
