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H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 6

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

Justice is what you get when you run out of money.

Justice is what you get when you run out of money.

Running, Justice

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.

Love Is, Secret, Married

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

Truth, Lying, Believe

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

Freedom, Men, Average

The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.

Love, Marriage, Couple

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

Men, Essence, Conspiracy

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

Self-respect - The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Respect, Self, Personality

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

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Funny, Crazy, Silly

A Book of Burlesques ch. 11 (1920)

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

Atheist, Honesty, Thinking

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

Law, Government, Years

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

Education, Teacher, Teaching

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.248, Cosimo, Inc.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Life, Food, Vegetables

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

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Inspirational, Nature, Truth

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

All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

Men, Essence, Voting

"The Constitution". Baltimore Evening Sun, August 19, 1935.

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Sex, Fighting, Men

The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

Men, Average, Special

Baltimore Evening Sun, February 12, 1923.

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

Truth, Errors, Discovery

"Prejudices: Third Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Inspirational, Birthday, Wisdom

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.311, Cosimo, Inc.

The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally, magic. It is impossible to imagine this world being really civilized so long as so much nonsense survives. In even its highest forms religion embraces concepts that run counter to all common sense. It can be defended only by making assumptions and adopting rules of logic that are never heard of in any other field of human thinking.

Running, Thinking, Long

[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

Government, Population, Citizens

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.147, Vintage

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Wise, Wisdom, Women

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

Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.

God, Running, Religious

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.298, Knopf

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

Believe, Thinking, Religion

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

Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

Freedom, Democracy, Liberty

Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

Encouragement, Birth Rate, Democracy

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