H. L. Mencken Quotes
+30A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
+6Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H.L.Mencken
+1A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
- H.L. Mencken
+1To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.
- H.L. Mencken
+1A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
+1If, 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
+1Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Puritanism the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
+1In 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.
- H. L. Mencken
+1A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
- H. L. Mencken
+1The 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
+1In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
+1One 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.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
- H. L. Mencken
+1Platitude: an idea that is admitted to be true by everyone, and that is not true.
- H.L. Mencken
+1The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
- H.L. Mencken
+1To 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
+1No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not.
- H.L. Mencken
+1Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
- H.L. Mencken
+1A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
- H.L. Mencken
+1Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken
+1The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
- H. L. Mencken