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H. L. Mencken

225 quotes

“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1908), pg. 217
“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1908/1913)
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917); later published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; 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, most of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Defense of Women (1918)
“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin? . . . They are laughing at Nietzsche yet . . .”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
“The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), XL. The Root of Religion
“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
“If there is one mental vice, indeed, which sets off the American people from all other folks who walk the earth ... it is that of assuming that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that ninety-nine percent of them are wrong.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The American: His New Puritanism," The Smart Set (February 1914)
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Few Pages of Notes," The Smart Set (January 1915); later published in A Little Book in C Major (1916)
“The allurement that [women] hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Incomparable Buzzsaw", The Smart Set, May 1919; later published in Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 (1920)
“Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Duty Before Security", The Smart Set, June 1919
“The bitter, of course, goes with the sweet. To be an American is, unquestionably, to be the noblest, grandest, the proudest mammal that ever hoofed the verdure of God's green footstool. Often, in the black abysm of the night, the thought that I am one awakens me with a blast of trumpets, and I am thrown into a cold sweat by contemplation of the fact. I shall cherish it on the scaffold; it will console me in Hell. But there is no perfection under Heaven, so even an American has his small blemishes, his scarcely discernible weaknesses, his minute traces of vice and depravity.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Smart Set (October 1919), p. 140
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Few Pages of Notes," The Smart Set (January 1915); later published in A Little Book in C major (1916), and A Mencken Crestomathy (1949)
“Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Book of Burlesques (1916)
“It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Book of Burlesques (1916)
“Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Book of Burlesques (1916)
“Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn't got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 51
“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 53
“At the bottom of Puritanism one finds envy of the fellow who is having a better time in the world, and hence hatred of him. At the bottom of democracy one finds the same thing. This is why all Puritans are democrats and all democrats are Puritans.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 76
“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Book in C Major (1916)
“Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married, too.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Little Book in C major (1916) ; later published in A Mencken Crestomathy (1949)
“The virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was at the job of reading it for days and days, endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness, its flatulent fatuity, its almost fabulous inconsequentiality.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia — to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meets the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
“The American is marked, in fact, by precisely the habits of mind and act that one would look for in a man insatiably ambitious and yet incurably fearful, to wit, the habits, on the one hand, of unpleasant assertiveness, of somewhat boisterous braggardism, of incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity, caution and subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as if he stood ready to defend them with his last drop of blood, and forever yielding them up at the first demand.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The American Credo: A Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
“It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prejudices, Second Series (1920) Ch. 1
“How does so much [false news] get into the American newspapers, even the good ones? Is it because journalists, as a class, are habitual liars, and prefer what is not true to what is true? I don't think it is. Rather, it is because journalists are, in the main, extremely stupid, sentimental and credulous fellows -- because nothing is easier than to fool them -- because the majority of them lack the sharp intelligence that the proper discharge of their duties demands.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1920-1936), p. 279
“To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Coda" from Smart Set (December 1920)
“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.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Epitaph" from Smart Set (December 1921)
“To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am — a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions — can be so happy as he can be in the United States.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Being An American (1922)
“When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baltimore Evening Sun (12 June 1922)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: H.L. Menken & George Jean Nathan, The Smart Set (1922)
“My literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in belief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George Müller (1923), Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast, Oxford University Press, (2005) pp. 105-106, first published in Autobiographical Notes, 1941
“The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baltimore Evening Sun (12 February 1923)
“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 (1880–1956) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prejudices, Fourth Series, ch. 11 (1924)
“What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
“Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
“Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun (June 29th, 1925), The Impossible Mencken