H. L. Mencken quotes - page 3

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. (H. L. Mencken)
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself. View quote
H. L. Mencken
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. View quote
H. L. Mencken
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. View quote
H. L. Mencken
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. View quote
H. L. Mencken
All successful newpapers 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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. (H. L. Mencken)
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the veriform appendix and God. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race. View quote
H. L. Mencken
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. View quote
H. L. Mencken
There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public. View quote
H. L. Mencken
You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Adultery is the application of democracy to love. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible. (H. L. Mencken)
How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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 the truth. View quote
H. L. Mencken
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken