Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy.


Henry Louis Mencken

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. ...
H. L. MENCKEN
People are the only animals who eat themselves to death.
ANONYMOUS
People who devote themselves to a life of style are admirable.
ZAC POSEN
All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.
DAVID ALLAN COE
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In 1255, Louis IX of France presented an elephant to Henry III of England to add to the menagerie of...
KAREN MAITLAND
Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves...
E. M. FORSTER
Here is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak men. Only strong men are cur...
MARTIN H. FISCHER
(To those who are themselves unhappy, the contentment of others can sometimes be mistaken for tedium...
JOHN CONNOLLY
Is there any thing Men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness,...
JOHN CHEEVER
One who works assiduously and wholeheartedly without bothering about the results shall definitely ac...
ATHARVA VEDA
Only men would think of cutting themselves to determine who the packleader is. Idiots.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Humans are the only animals on earth that have done nothing to improve our planet. We are the only a...
BOBBY W. MILLER
There are unhappy parents, students and staff. The only ones who are happy are the administration.
CARMEN DAVIS
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY
The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be f...
ADAM SMITH
I think it's a very emotional issue because animals can't speak for themselves. These are people who...
ELAINE HICKS
Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNA...
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and the...
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocau...
MADELINE MILLER
A person who has common sense knows that men and women are also animals.
ANUJ SOMANY
Wretched men, I was moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be helpers of one another, are...
EDWARD BELLAMY
There are tremendous resources available to people who are looking for it. Individual investors can ...
DAVID KASLOW
Another reason for unhappy marriage is that men can’t fool their wives as they could their mothers...
VIKRANT PARSAI
Men of few words are the best men. -King Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 2.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1...
BLAISE PASCAL
Exactly Straight women who surround themselves only with gay men or white people who refuse any othe...
JUDITH LIGHT
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about t...
AGATHA CHRISTIE
People who are always making allowances for themselves soon go bankrupt.
MARY PETTIBONE POOLE
People who are always making allowances for themselves soon go bankrupt
MARY PETTIBONE POOLE
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The only thing wrong with trying to please everyone is that there's always at least one person who w...
ELIZABETH PARKER
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to ...
HERBERT N. CASSON
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to...
HERBERT N. CASSON
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to ...
ROBERT BURTON
I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell yo...
G.K. CHESTERTON
We want our partners to have confidence they are not unnecessarily exposing themselves to IP problem...
HARDY POPPINGA
Since antiquity, men have defined themselves by those who are excluded.
JIM ROBINSON
The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Show us a man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The cap...
H. L. WAYLAND
Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.
NAOMI WOLF
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves abo...
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The truth is that not enough of those who topped St. Louis are left to make it work in St. Louis,
LARRY MATYSIK
Wise is the one who learns from another´s mistakes. Less wise is the one who learns only from his o...
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.
HERODOTUS
All men are enemies. All animals are comrades
GEORGE ORWELL
Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers ~ strong, competent, capable mo...
BARBARA KATZ ROTHMAN
There are men who wants only the woman; such are tagged, 'real men', and there are ones who want onl...
MICHAEL BASSEY JOHNSON
Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for w...
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Dying," Morrie suddenly said, "is the only one thing to be sad over, Mitch.
Living unhappily i...
MITCH ALBOM
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrat...
FULTON J. SHEEN
... When Princes devote themselves rather to pleasure than to arms, they lose their dominions.
NICCOLò MACHIAVELLI
Animals speak but only to those who listen!
SUPERNA BATHEJA
Henry Adams and the Making of America,
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
Henry Adams and the Making of America
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
A person who has an intelligence knows that the men and women are also animals, but others different...
ANUJ SOMANY
Only that 'holy' book which teaches you to love all beings - animals or human things - read. Another...
FAKEER ISHAVARDAS
Being with Henry doesn't mean you have to give up who you are. Henry doesn't define you.
AIMEE CARTER
What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it ...
CALVIN TRILLIN
The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves, but who think others are
JOSH BILLINGS
If he is in fact 'unhappy in his relationship' it's not your job to console him. If his chick 'doesn...
JOY MANISCALCO
Animals are considered as property only. To destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor,...
SHIRLEY LORD
Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the wh...
JOSE MARTI
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place ...
V. S. NAIPAUL
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place ...
V.S. NAIPAUL
All these books have lived together ... inside my mind. They follow one another only on paper and be...
ANDRE GIDE
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sobe...
LORD CHESTERFIELD
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober ...
PHILIP STANHOPE, 4TH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober ...
LORD CHESTERFIELD
They're both inappropriate men who are honest about themselves, and that's extraordinarily appealing...
CAMERON THOR
Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.
BRIGITTE BARDOT
The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.
ANDREW CARNEGIE
Those who are held wise among men, and who search for the reason of things, are those who bring the ...
EURIPIDES
Only people who believe in themselves are able to do exploits
SUNDAY ADELAJA
In everything I have done here, I've been in the company of great women who devote themselves to bet...
JOHN CLARKE
The recipe to an unhappy life in Japan is to want to be Japanese if you are not. Anyone who wants to...
PICO IYER
The wiser of men are those who learn from mistakes without actually making them.
CHARLES M FORD II
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expec...
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expec...
STEPHEN BUTLER LEACOCK
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expec...
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to...
P. J. O'ROURKE
William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia in April of 1841, after only one month in office, was ...
ROBERT DALLEK
Things that are holy are revealed only to men who are holy.
HIPPOCRATES
People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody inv...
JOHN LE CARRE
In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion f...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to...
MARK TWAIN
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to...
MARK TWAIN
I'm not unhappy," he said. "Only people with no purpose are unhappy. I've got a purpose.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Louis, Louis, Louis...Stil whining, Louis! Are you quite finished? I've had to listen to that for ce...
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
From my personal point of view, the Animals are dead. They killed themselves.
ERIC BURDON
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The ...
WILL ROGERS
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and ...
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not fou...
BLAISE PASCAL
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a m...
IMMANUEL KANT

More Henry Louis Mencken

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. B...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Adultery is the application of democracy to love
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nic...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The Liberals have many tails, and chase them all
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
If you want peace, work for justice.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will als...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn't, they'd be married too.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Going to school does not make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a ca...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
You can't kiss an oil well.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expe...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch the...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as s...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
All government, of course, is against liberty.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other a...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionarie...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, i...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from ad...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite eas...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
[Rudolph Valentino was] what is commonly called for want of a better name, a gentleman. In brief, Va...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Men are sad because they have to die so soon, women are sad because they were born so long ago.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
An individual who forces himself to accept this or that idea, or who pretends to accept this or that...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scien...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a d...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The fundamentalist mind, running in a single rut for fifty years, is now quite unable to comprehend ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Say what you want about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that th...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Theology-An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will n...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a litt...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
When women kiss, it always reminds one of prizefighters shaking hands
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
He (the businessman) is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There is a bird that knows no closed season - and if he won't come down to Texas oil stock, or one-n...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
When women kiss it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every h...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid fo...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Gynecologists: perhaps the most ignorant class of men, when it comes to knowledge of women, in the c...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as ha...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
No normal man ever fell in love after 30 when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
One yearns unspeakably for a composer who gives out his pair of honest themes, and then develops the...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
People will believe what they want to believe
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Change is not progress
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were i...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
School days are the unhappiest in the whole span if human existence. They are full of dull, unintell...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Old age ain't no place for sissies.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterili...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-c...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to d...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better p...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
At the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight, when he is most gratefully warmed...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
He uses his sources as a drunkard uses lampposts; not to light him upon his way, but to dissimulate ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American gospel tent, who pretends to k...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just afte...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is s...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothi...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average America...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
In order to teach chemistry or psychology or even history or Greek a man must actually know somethin...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Living with a dog is messy - like living with an idealist
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I have yet to meet (a socialist) who was not as gullible as a Mississippi darkey - nay, as a Mississ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of peop...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The average schoolmaster is, and always must be, an ass
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
After all, the world is not our handiwork, and we are not responsible for what goes on in it, save w...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian business...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
What ass first let lose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege? ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries fo...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is unc...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Many an American Congressman comes to Washington from a district attorney's office: you may be sure ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what m...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Do not overestimate the decency of the human race
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
And out of each (schoolhouse) is vomited the standard product of the New Pedagogy - an endless proce...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
We must respect the other fellow's religion,but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many in...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventur...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Painting is the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Christian theology is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form o...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, hone...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and great...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN