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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 21

All Quotes Achievement Adultery Adventure Age Alcohol Arguing Art Atheism Atheist Beer Belief Business Change Character Children Choices College Comedy Common Sense Communism Conscience Conspiracy Cooking Country Courage Criticism Critics Culture Cynicism Death Democracy Determination Devil Difficulty Dignity Doubt Drinking Dying Earth Education Effort Ethics Evil Exercise Faith Fear Feelings Fighting Food Free Speech Freedom Funny Genius Giving God Golf Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Hell History Home Honesty Honor House Humanity Husband Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Intelligence Intuition Journalism Joy Judging Justice Kissing Knowledge Language Laughter Learning Liberty Life Literature Logic Love Lying Marriage Military Money Moon Morality Music Nature Office Originality Passion Past Patriotism Peace Personality Philosophy Politics Pot Poverty Prejudice Progress Propaganda Quality Quitting Reading Religion Respect Revolution Running Safety School Science Science And Religion Skins Slavery Society Son Sports Struggle Stupidity Style Success Suffering Sunday Sympathy Teaching Temptation Time Today Tragedy Trust Truth Virtue Voting Waiting War Water Weakness Wife Wisdom Work Writing Youth

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools.... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife.

Education, School, Night

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Funny, Life, Choices

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.

Truth, Learning, Knowledge

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.311, Knopf

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

Horse, Cat, Gay

"Clinical Notes". The American Mercury (January 1924), p. 75; later quoted in H. L. Mencken "Prejudices: Fourth Series", 1924.

No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.

Walking Sticks, Lynching, Revolution

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

Political, Democracy, Life Is

'Baltimore Evening Sun' 9 December 1929

The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.

Art, Blue, Proof

The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.

Evil, Democracy, Doctrine

All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.

Order, Religion, Atheism

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.89, Vintage

Osteopath--One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory isto be found in the heads of those who believe it.

Believe, Tissues, Pressure

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

Ideas, Cynical, Literature

A Book of Burlesques ch. 11 (1920)

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

Freedom, Thinking, Stupidity

It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicalitysentence after sentence that has no apparent meaning at all--stuff quite as bad as the worst bosh of Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Believe, Style, Stuff

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.

Marriage, Men, Scotch Whisky

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

Country, Achievement, Journalism

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.95, Knopf

When I reach the shades at last it will no doubt astonish Satan to discover, on thumbing my dossier, that I was a member of the Y.M.C.A.

Death, Doubt, Shade

If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.

Literature, Allan Poe, Critics

There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

Writing, Discovery, Joy

H.L. Mencken (1917). “A book of prefaces”, p.85, Рипол Классик

No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion.

Might, Information, Proof

All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.

Equality, Equal, Denied

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.

Trust, Mutual Interest, Together

Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them.

Views, May, Balloons

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. Nor has any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.

Education, Running, Mistake

Chicago Tribune, 19 Sept. 1926.

Citizenship in New York is now worth no more than citizenship in Arkansas, for it is open to any applicant from the marshes of Bessarabia, and, still worse, to any applicant from Arkansas.

New York, Arkansas, Citizenship

H. L. MENCKEN (1924). “PREJUDICES FOURTH SERIES”

The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.

Philosopher, Celibacy, States

H. L. Mencken (2003). “Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.35, See Sharp Press

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