H.L. Mencken Quotes

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

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.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that, he begins to bunch them.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Love is like war: easy to begin, hard to end, and forever treasured in memory.

Marriage is a risky proposition because men invariably come with strings attached: relations.

H.L. Mencken Quotes part 2

Democracy is rooted in the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

When a new source of taxation is found, it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Justice is a concept that people invoke when they want to put a stop to something unpleasant, without doing anything themselves.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending the scoundrels.

I define democracy as the eagle befreedomn converted into a hen weighing 1.5 pounds.

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.

The stupidest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

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.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Marriage is one of those institutions which causes a far greater number of people much unhappiness than it ever brings any happiness to.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as cats do.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.