H. L. Mencken Quotes

“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”

“Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.”

“The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.”

“Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.”

“A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.”

“No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.”

“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.”

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

“To large numbers of American citizens life in certain parts of the country becomes intolerably hazardous. They may be seized on any pretext, however flimsy, and put to death with horrible tortures. No government pretending to be civilized can go on condoning such atrocities. Either it must make every possible effort to put them down or it must suffer the scorn and contempt of Christendom.”

“At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.”

“[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.”

“Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah”

“The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.”

“Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.”

“After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?”

“There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.”

“Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.”

“The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.”

“It is only doubt that creates.”

“The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.”

“Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”

“Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.”

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

“Every man is his own hell.”

“It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.”