On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.


H. L. Mencken

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Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
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A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
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I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
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Time stays, we go.
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A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
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Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the cre...
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God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only san...
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Injustice is relatively easy to bear what stings is justice.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the ...
H. L. MENCKEN
JUDGE, n: A law student who marks his own papers.
H. L. MENCKEN
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours....
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Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Fathe...
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Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not...
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Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
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The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which ...
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Alimony -- the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certaint...
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
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It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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Before a man speaks, it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks it is seldom nec...
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The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundre...
H. L. MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other a...
H. L. MENCKEN
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. MENCKEN
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea...
H. L. MENCKEN
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. MENCKEN
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. MENCKEN
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
H. L. MENCKEN
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common hones...
H. L. MENCKEN
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
H. L. MENCKEN
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t...
H. L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
H. L. MENCKEN
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sou...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MENCKEN
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will a...
H. L. MENCKEN
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of...
H. L. MENCKEN
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed age...
H. L. MENCKEN
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl...
H. L. MENCKEN
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice...
H. L. MENCKEN
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of peop...
H. L. MENCKEN
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regar...
H. L. MENCKEN
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
H. L. MENCKEN
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries fo...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
H. L. MENCKEN
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom nec...
H. L. MENCKEN
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our f...
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he fo...
H. L. MENCKEN
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
H. L. MENCKEN
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. MENCKEN
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time ma...
H. L. MENCKEN
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and mis...
H. L. MENCKEN
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ...
H. L. MENCKEN
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are goo...
H. L. MENCKEN
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
H. L. MENCKEN