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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 13

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The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.

Two, Race, Class

A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

Doctors, Political, Tin

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Witty, Powerful, Humorous

America's biggest failure is its inability to take comedy seriously.

America, Inability, Comedy

I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

Government, Individual, Knows

In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

Funny, Book, Reading

"A little book in C major".

For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.

World, Littles, Truth Seekers

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Music, Baseball, Italian

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.

Book, Race, Years

H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.57, See Sharp Press

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

Men, Coward, Doe

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.124, Cosimo, Inc.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

Inspirational, Funny, Humor

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Beautiful, Men, Machines

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.26, Knopf

Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.

Quality, Use, Unionism

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Christian, Freedom, Democracy

A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.

Men, Mind, His Love

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.16, Vintage

The only time you have a free press is when you own one.

Free Press, Presses, Only Time

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Wise, Running, Wisdom

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.

Men, Night, Mind

H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.

Children, Men, Support

Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.

Two, Three, Idiot

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.

Religious, Horse, Ignorance

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Horse, Jobs, Society

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

Why do men go to zoos?

Zoos, Men, Atheism

"A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

Fear, Men, Atheism

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.54, Knopf

Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.

Class, People, Leader

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