Writer · American · 1880 – 1956 · 148 quotes
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. Mencken
Writer · American · 1880 – 1956
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
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.
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
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.
No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
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.
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
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.
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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.
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
Life is a dead-end street.
Every man is his own hell.
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
Time stays, we go.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
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.
