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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 2

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The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Education, Learning, Liberty

The American Mercury Magazine, April 24, 1924.

Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

Religious, Hate, Religion

After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

Done, Hell, Said

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

Men, Thinking, Average

There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will believe it.

Stupid, Believe, Ideas

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

Funny, Freedom, Political

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

"A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

Mean, Men, Class

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.250, Knopf

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

Freedom, Men, Ideas

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Freedom, War, Party

Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (222), 1956.

Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

People, Cynical, Idiot

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Years, People, Records

Chicago Tribune, 19 Sept. 1926.

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

Freedom, Men, Order

"LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (p. 48), August 5, 1946.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Freedom, Integrity, Men

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

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Freedom, Honesty, Hate

The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

Pride, Men, Vanity

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

Men, Thinking, Ideas

The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

Hate, Women, Inspiration

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

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

Country, Hate, Patriotism

There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

Differences, Voting, Made

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

God, Being Happy, Cynical

A Mencken Chrestomathy ch. 30 (1949)

The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

Love, Courage, Lying

Notes on Democracy pt. 3 (1926)

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

Life, Ocean, Sea

Women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired, not because they practise a magic inherited from savagery, but simply and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance what most men could not see with searchlights and telescopes.... They are the supreme realists of the race.

Men, Race, Magic

In Defense of Women, rev. ed., pt. 1, ch. 5 (1922)

Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.

Husband, Men, Heartless

"Prejudices". Fourth Series,

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