Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.


H.L. 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

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H. L. MENCKEN
Self-respect The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what...
H.L. MENCKEN
Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley ...
JOHN SCALZI
The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part ...
ELIZABETH BOWEN
I'm suspicious of their story, ... They are not out of the woods in this one yet.
JOHN STONE
There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of o...
ELIZABETH BOWEN
Self respect by definition is a confidence and pride in feeling that you are behaving in an honorabl...
MIYA YAMANOUCHI
If one is going to write about war, self respect demands that one
GRAHAM GREENE
The suspicious believe everybody to be suspicious; the liar feels secure in the thought that he is n...
JAMES ALLEN
Self-respect knows no considerations.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Self-respect knows no considerations.
MOHANDAS GANDHI
It is disgraceful to live at the cost of one's self-respect. Self-respect is the most vital factor i...
B. R. AMBEDKAR
Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one's self-r...
EMMA GOLDMAN
Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one's self-res...
EMMA GOLDMAN
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN
Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not...
B. C. FORBES
Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not...
B. C. FORBES
Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.
THUCYDIDES
There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
We just did what no one else at Eisenhower had been able to do. But we aren't through yet. We've got...
LESTER HART
We get the feeling on the other side of our computer that no one is looking back at us through windo...
MICHAEL BUGEJA
She is so secure in her beautifully imperfect self that she would welcome you with open arms, no jud...
SUSAN C. YOUNG
Sometimes "No" is the kindest word.
VIRONIKA TUGALEVA
I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis ...
MILAN KUNDERA
In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect... and no.
JANE HADDAM
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. thanks to Alan Bennett -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -H. L. Mencken.
H. L. MENCKEN
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that on...
SAMUEL BECKETT
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that on...
MAXWELL MALTZ
Self discipline is self respect. If you can't respect yourself nobody will do.
EPHDAN
Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his b...
THOMAS S. SZASZ
Loneliness can't be seen. It's a worse feeling that can only be felt, We experience a lots of feelin...
DEBOLINA BHAWAL
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Bla...
JUNE JORDAN
If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven't figured it out yet.
TOM PETERS
We haven't disciplined anyone yet. No one has been fired. It's still early.
DINA TYLER
Why should I take my clothes off (...) when there are, already, so many other woman doing it for me?
EFRAT CYBULKIEWICZ
Those who respect others have a self respect. Respect those who have a self respect.
EPHDAN
A disability that is not apparent in the person’s appearance is no less intrusive, no less painful...
SAHAR ABDULAZIZ
Now isn´t the time to change yourself to fit into the world... you should be changing the world to ...
ALEXANDRA BRACKEN
There is no bad feeling towards Liverpool from us. Winning the Champions League was a fantastic achi...
FRANK LAMPARD
Two people can only live as one when each is prepared to give and receive trust and understanding. A...
HELEN HOLLICK
Self-forgiveness is essentially inseparable from self-respect and self-responsibility. With self for...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA
Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as rea...
THEODOR ADORNO
For success is a discipline. For a discipline is a courage. For a courage is a self respect. For a s...
EPHDAN
That's SHIT!

How do you remove it?
You just put it inside the trash, easy as that.
DEYTH BANGER
Emotional safety is feeling internally secure and confident in your life.
AMY LEIGH MERCREE
When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something t...
THOMAS SZASZ
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something o...
THOMAS S. SZASZ
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something o...
THOMAS SZASZ
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something o...
THOMAS SZASZ
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect...
H.L. MENCKEN
If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man confo...
H.L. MENCKEN
There is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter—this arrogant ja-sag...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is hard to tell if a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his plac...
H.L. MENCKEN
In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of co...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this worl...
H.L. MENCKEN
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul...
H.L. MENCKEN
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
As I grow older I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that giving each human being but one life is...
H.L. MENCKEN
ONE OF the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that re...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H.L. MENCKEN
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L. MENCKEN
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian i...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true i...
H.L. MENCKEN
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it make...
H.L. MENCKEN
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the...
H.L. MENCKEN
People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it....
H.L. MENCKEN
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. Bu...
H.L. MENCKEN
All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing form...
H.L. MENCKEN
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always to...
H.L. MENCKEN
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom m...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and t...
H.L. MENCKEN
All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. MENCKEN
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. MENCKEN
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t...
H.L. MENCKEN
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H.L. MENCKEN
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.
H.L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H.L. MENCKEN
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-...
H.L. MENCKEN
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to susta...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to th...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every cit...
H.L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable ac...
H.L. MENCKEN
A judge is a law student who marks their own examination papers.
H.L. MENCKEN
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. MENCKEN
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certain...
H.L. MENCKEN
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral valu...
H.L. MENCKEN

More 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
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect...
H.L. MENCKEN
If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man confo...
H.L. MENCKEN
There is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter—this arrogant ja-sag...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is hard to tell if a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his plac...
H.L. MENCKEN
In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of co...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this worl...
H.L. MENCKEN
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul...
H.L. MENCKEN
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
As I grow older I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that giving each human being but one life is...
H.L. MENCKEN
ONE OF the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that re...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H.L. MENCKEN
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L. MENCKEN
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian i...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true i...
H.L. MENCKEN
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it make...
H.L. MENCKEN
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the...
H.L. MENCKEN
People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it....
H.L. MENCKEN
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. Bu...
H.L. MENCKEN
All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing form...
H.L. MENCKEN
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always to...
H.L. MENCKEN
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom m...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and t...
H.L. MENCKEN
All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. MENCKEN
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. MENCKEN
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory t...
H.L. MENCKEN
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H.L. MENCKEN
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.
H.L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H.L. MENCKEN
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-...
H.L. MENCKEN
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to susta...
H.L. MENCKEN
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to th...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every cit...
H.L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable ac...
H.L. MENCKEN
A judge is a law student who marks their own examination papers.
H.L. MENCKEN
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. MENCKEN
A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certain...
H.L. MENCKEN
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral valu...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bri...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H.L. MENCKEN
Nature abhors a moron.
H.L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed ag...
H.L. MENCKEN
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery ...
H.L. MENCKEN
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sa...
H.L. MENCKEN
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasse...
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
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Sc...
H.L. MENCKEN
We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as somethi...
H.L. MENCKEN
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process i...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed...
H.L. MENCKEN
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Any man who inflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
H.L. MENCKEN
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the ...
H.L. MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
H.L. MENCKEN
The true function of art is to...edit nature and so make it coherent and lovely. The artist is a so...
H.L. MENCKEN
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H.L. MENCKEN
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object i...
H.L. MENCKEN
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H.L. MENCKEN
When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H.L. MENCKEN
I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.
H.L. MENCKEN
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H.L. MENCKEN
The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young...
H.L. MENCKEN
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed{and hence the clamorous to be le...
H.L. MENCKEN
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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 is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that te...
H.L. MENCKEN
For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to th...
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
What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Sci...
H.L. MENCKEN
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H.L. MENCKEN
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. MENCKEN
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian...
H.L. MENCKEN
Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time wh...
H.L. MENCKEN
The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge...
H.L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H.L. MENCKEN
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some...
H.L. MENCKEN
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more li...
H.L. MENCKEN
The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H.L. MENCKEN
When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivabl...
H.L. MENCKEN
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every h...
H.L. MENCKEN
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, wit...
H.L. MENCKEN
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and gre...
H.L. MENCKEN
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H.L. MENCKEN
He believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality...
H.L. MENCKEN
When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the su...
H.L. MENCKEN
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, f...
H.L. MENCKEN
In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But t...
H.L. MENCKEN
Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion o...
H.L. MENCKEN
Yet the same thing happens to the notions of morality. They are devised, at the start, as measures o...
H.L. MENCKEN
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H.L. MENCKEN
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. MENCKEN
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the es...
H.L. MENCKEN
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though sh...
H.L. MENCKEN
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
H.L. MENCKEN
I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H.L. MENCKEN
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and ha...
H.L. MENCKEN
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agen...
H.L. MENCKEN
You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
H.L. MENCKEN
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; ...
H.L. MENCKEN
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H.L. MENCKEN
the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
H.L. MENCKEN
Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sak...
H.L. MENCKEN
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be r...
H.L. MENCKEN
Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit ...
H.L. MENCKEN
The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist...
H.L. MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. MENCKEN
There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portug...
H.L. MENCKEN
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless...
H.L. MENCKEN
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world the...
H.L. MENCKEN
That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS
You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary tr...
H.L. BURKE
A peaceful feeling: A happy harmony or symphony of all of our character pieces working in powerful u...
H.L. BALCOMB
ART happens every time we live in the spirit of the moment’s greatness" from Cinderella in Focus
H.L. BALCOMB
If religion is understanding God in the collective stories of life, then spirituality is finding God...
H.L. BALCOMB
When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life si...
H.L. BALCOMB
The smaller the item of gratitude, the purer is the connection to our heart.
H.L. BALCOMB
Vulnerability along with a sense of humility are the purest forms of strength.
H.L. BALCOMB
Her smile makes me feel like a million little stars have just found their home in the gravitational ...
H.L. BALCOMB
We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by pr...
H.L. WEGLEY
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner ...
HL MENCKEN
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
H. L. MENCKEN
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKEN
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. MENCKEN
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. MENCKEN
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin sl...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MENCKEN
On one issue, at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think becau...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation...
H. L. MENCKEN
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the pr...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor...
H. L. MENCKEN
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. MENCKEN
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly ...
H. L. MENCKEN
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Time stays, we go.
H. L. MENCKEN
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
H. L. MENCKEN
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom...
H. L. MENCKEN
Archbishop -- A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. MENCKEN
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who wi...
H. L. MENCKEN
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will b...
H. L. MENCKEN
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surm...
H. L. MENCKEN
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are wo...
H. L. MENCKEN
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. MENCKEN
There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as ...
H. L. MENCKEN
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adr...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had an...
H. L. MENCKEN
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. MENCKEN
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
H. L. MENCKEN
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys...
H. L. MENCKEN
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. MENCKEN
If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. MENCKEN
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's ...
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
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe in the evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party...
H. L. MENCKEN
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
H. L. MENCKEN
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a c...
H. L. MENCKEN
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of du...
H. L. MENCKEN
Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. MENCKEN
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many in...
H. L. 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
The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the ...
H. L. MENCKEN
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
H. L. MENCKEN
Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright.
H. L. MENCKEN
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice s...
H. L. MENCKEN
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will...
H. L. MENCKEN
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
H. L. MENCKEN
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her hea...
H. L. MENCKEN
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regar...
H. L. MENCKEN
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, th...
H. L. MENCKEN
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
H. L. MENCKEN
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
H. L. MENCKEN
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards ce...
H. L. MENCKEN
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better...
H. L. MENCKEN
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
H. L. MENCKEN
Time is the great equalizer in the field of morals.
H. L. MENCKEN
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act...
H. L. MENCKEN
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are ...
H. L. MENCKEN
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he...
H. L. MENCKEN
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is t...
H. L. MENCKEN
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in l...
H. L. MENCKEN