Mencken's Quotes
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Mencken's Quotes & Sayings
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If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God ...
— H.L. Mencken
A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious.
— H.L. Mencken
I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
— H.L. Mencken
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
— H.L. Mencken
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
— H.L. Mencken
Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
— H.L. Mencken
Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
— H.L. Mencken
Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.
— H.L. Mencken
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
— H.L. Mencken
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
— H.L. Mencken
I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
— H.L. Mencken
No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.
— H.L. Mencken
Wealth - any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
— H.L. Mencken
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
— H.L. Mencken
In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
— H.L. Mencken
Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
— H.L. Mencken
Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
— H.L. Mencken
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
— H.L. Mencken
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
— H.L. Mencken
Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right.
— H.L. Mencken
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
— H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. MENCKEN
— Frank Luntz
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
— H.L. Mencken
When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
— H.L. Mencken
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.
— H.L. Mencken
![Mencken's Quotes By H.L. Mencken: [Government's] great contribution to human wisdom ... is](https://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/menckens-quotes-by-h-l-mencken-2009123.jpg "Mencken's Quotes By H.L. Mencken: [Government's] great contribution to human wisdom ... is")
[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom ... is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
— H.L. Mencken
An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.
— H.L. Mencken
A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband.
— H.L. Mencken
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.
— H.L. Mencken
The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
— H.L. Mencken
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
— H.L. Mencken
In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
— 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.
— H.L. Mencken
The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.
— H.L. Mencken
I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.
— H.L. Mencken
Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
— H.L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
— H.L. Mencken
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
— H.L. Mencken
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
— H.L. Mencken
The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
— H.L. Mencken
Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
— H.L. Mencken
Every man is his own hell.
— H.L. Mencken
A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
— H.L. Mencken
The worst government is the most moral.
— H.L. Mencken
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
— H.L. Mencken
Whenever a husband and a wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
— H.L. Mencken
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
— H.L. Mencken
When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
— H.L. Mencken
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
— H.L. Mencken
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
— H.L. Mencken
Time stays, we go.
— H.L. Mencken
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
— H.L. Mencken
He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
— H.L. Mencken
The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!
— H.L. Mencken
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
— H.L. Mencken
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
— H.L. Mencken
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
Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety
— H.L. Mencken
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
— H.L. Mencken
The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
— H.L. Mencken
Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.
— H.L. Mencken
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
— H.L. Mencken
Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
— H.L. Mencken
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
— H.L. Mencken
Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
— H.L. Mencken
The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
— H.L. Mencken
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
— H.L. Mencken
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
— H.L. Mencken