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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 17

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In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a

In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes.

Eye, Wind, Office

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Sad, Motherhood, Religion

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

War, Democracy, Liberty

[Science] must be amoral by its very nature: The minute it begins separating facts into the two categories of good ones and bad ones it ceases to be science and becomes a mere nuisance, like theology.

Two, Nuisance, Facts

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.

Anniversary, Marriage, Husband

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.

Believe, Men, Speech

"What I Believe", The Forum 84 (p. 139), September, 1930.

It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

Jobs, Lying, Trying

"Notes on Democracy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1926.

It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.

Love, Men, Kidneys

"Prejudices". Fourth Series,

Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.

Sleep, Men, Imagination

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.23, Vintage

The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.

Philosophical, Boys, Men

Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

Government, America, Psychology

Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.

Nineteen, Los Angeles, Metropolis

Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.

Country, Men, Iron

"More Tips for Novelists". "Chicago Tribune" Newspaper, May 2, 1926.

Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.

Play, Ideas, Democracy

In Defense of Women, rev. ed., introduction (1922)

The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

Teacher, Artist, World

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

It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.

Men, Community, Healthy

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.

Change, Kings, Men

Preface to the first edition of "The American Credo: A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind", book by George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken, 1920.

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

Children, Men, Political

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.371, Knopf

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

Men, Laughing, Tragedy

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

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

Trust, Marriage, Mutual Interest

The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

Country, Real, United States

The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

Opinion, Cigar, Worst

On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.

Christian, Religious, Ignorance

War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

Military, War, Mean

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.23, Knopf

Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.

Democracies Have, Enemy, Democracy

H. L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.50, Read Books Ltd

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