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H. L. Mencken Quotes about War

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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Peace, Freedom, War

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.

When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Peace, War, Limits

"The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations" edited by Antony Jay, 1996.

Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

Life, War, Government

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

War, Men, Civilization

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

War, People, Liberty

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Peace, Freedom, War

The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with everything we know of the workings of the human mind, and with every sound idea formulated by mankind. If it prevailed in the whole modern world we'd still be in the Thirteenth Century; nay, we'd be back among the Egyptians of the pyramid age. Its only coherent contribution to Western thought has been theosophy-and theosophy is as idiotic as Christian Science. It has absolutely nothing to offer a civilized white man.

Christian, Philosophy, War

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Baby, Peace, War

'Minority Report'. Collected in Notebooks (1956).

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

Freedom, War, Men

All American wars (except the Civil War) have been fought with the odds overwhelmingly in favor of the Americans. In the history of armed combat such affairs as the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars must be ranked, not as wars at all, but as organized assassinations. In the two World Wars, no American faced a bullet until his adversaries had been worn down by years of fighting others.

Peace, War, Fighting

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Life, Spiritual, War

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.131, Vintage

The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.

War, United States, World

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Diary of H. L. Mencken”, p.682, Vintage

All of the American's foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.

War, Lynching, Political

H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.43, Cosimo, Inc.

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

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

This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

War, Struggle, Two

"The Antichrist". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, Introduction, 1895.

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

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 thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

Peace, War, Mean

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.22, Knopf

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

War, Hero, Soldier

Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.

Husband, War, Next Day

American Mercury, Apr. 1928

In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.

Running, War, Long

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

War, Believe, Government

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason

Peace, War, Moral

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