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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 15

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I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.

I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.

Food, Drinking, Dark

New York Post 18 Sept. 1945

It seems to me that you are better off, as a writer and as an American, in a small town than you'd be in New York. I thoroughly detest New York, though I have to go there very often.... Have you ever noticed that no American writer of any consequence lives in Manhattan? Dreiser tried it (after many years in the Bronx), but finally moved to California.

New York, Years, California

Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.

Conceited, Reality, Effort

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

Men, Temptation, Weapons

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

Couple, Political, Baptism

Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

Men, Democracy, Herds

The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.

Grief, Banking, Pestilence

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

Art, Ymca, World

Prejudices, First Series ch. 16 (1919)

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

Men, Thinking, Average

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.

Bible, Biblical, Blood

What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.

Mind, Dull, Truth Is

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Government, Usa, Literature

"The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations". Book edited by Antony Jay, 1996.

The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.

Gentleman, Facts, Communism

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.21, Knopf

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

Men, May, Belief

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.11, Vintage

No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

Men, Waiting, Temptation

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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.

Believe, Effort, Political

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

It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.

Doubt, Minorities

H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.94, See Sharp Press

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate.

World, Unjust, Motive

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.12, Vintage

If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

Average, Democracy, United States

The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.

Gossip, Indignant, Doings

Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law. The States are charged with punishing all such invasions as the common rights of the citizens, but some of them have failed in their effort to do so, and others have not honestly tried. Meanwhile, lynchings continue, and though they do not increase in number, they show some tendency to increase in savagery.

Rights, Lynching, Law

New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.

Christian, New York, Powerful

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Happiness, Lying, Home

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

All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.

War, Lynching, Political

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.43, Cosimo, Inc.

A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.

Gentleman, Strikes, Provocation

H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

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