H. L. Mencken Quotes

“I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.”

“It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage, and soon or late it conquers them.”

“Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.”

“A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.”

“The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.”

“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.”

“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.”

“For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.”

“The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.”

“Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.”

“Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.”

“I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.”

“You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.”

“When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.”

“A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.”

“Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.”

“When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.”

“Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.”

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

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

“Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.”

“Writing does for me what giving milk does for a cow.”

“It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.”

“Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.”

“The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.”