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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 19

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The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

Mother, Science, Effort

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.248, Knopf

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

Science, Race, Ideas

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

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

Law, Pockets, Faces

All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.

Winning, People, Influence

If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.

Men, Achieve, Prodigies

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.268, Vintage

Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.

Kings, Animal, Men

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.128, Cosimo, Inc.

Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or what he submits to from his wife. Simply tell me how he makes his living. It is the safest and surest of all known tests. A man who gets his board and lodging on this ball in an ignominious way is inevitably an ignominious man.

Spring, Work, Character

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.20, Vintage

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

Character, Men, Ideas

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.

Marriage, Years, Two

No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.

Men, Reason, Democratic

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.353, Vintage

Nietzsche, to the end of his days, remained a Russian pastor's son, and hence two-thirds of a Puritan; he erected his war upon holiness, toward the end, into a sort of holy war.

War, Philosophical, Son

Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.

Real, Math, Bridges

Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.

Women, Hard Times, Law

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.40, Vintage

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

Religious, Religion, Atheism

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

Food, Men, Cooking

Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons.

Education, Running, Thinking

"Minority Report".

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Writing, Dull, Subjects

The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.

Music, Feelings, Mirth

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.524, Vintage

The average schoolmaster is, and always must be, an ass.

Teacher, Average, Ass

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

Men, Experience, Poor

There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.

Promise, Politician, Pot

Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.

War, Party, Choices

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.159, Vintage

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Regret, Character, Men

Prejudices, Fourth Series ch. 11 (1924)

Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.

Life, Kissing, Hands

The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

Decision, Demand, Decision Making

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