FastSaying

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed{and hence the clamorous to be led to safety} by menacing it with endless hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."


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

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led 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 The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led t...
H.L. MENCKEN Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be...
GARY F EVANS... I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES ...we live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an ...
NATALIE GOLDBERG Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT Congratulations, to the people which made gotham series, still need some more and extra work!
DEYTH BANGER To have the cognitive abilities to do research and development is vital to a forever expanding world...
GARY F EVANS... The first and foremost human right or fundamental right is the right to exist.
APURVA GAGLANI If we ever put research into what the subconscious is we could probably come to the conclusion that ...
GARY F EVANS... i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g...
SIMI GREWAL Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Entrepreneur, you're either raising the bar of excellence or, you're exhaling at the bar which is ex...
ONYI ANYADO In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH We are hell different but vanity keeps us stuck.
PARUL WADHWA Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It i...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK Do you know great people are continually quoted while the average always misquote great people?
ONYI ANYADO The saying sell all your belongings & give to the poor simply means "Redirect your mind to the verit...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.
ERIC ROTH You're afraid of getting hurt like I'm afraid to die. It doesn't mean I'm not going to live every da...
VI KEELAND Wesley Rush doesn't chase girls, but I'm chasing you.
KODY KEPLINGER I turn and kick with the first one and feel myself being lifted and thrown towards the beach. It's l...
MARK SMITH What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit o...
DOUGLAS ADAMS I hate that just because you happen to be good at something,people automatically think that's what m...
AMBER SMITH Nothing in the world matters if you don't matter.
STEVEN CUOCO Then you've made the only choice. But there's a penalty attached, as there is to most things you wan...
MARGARET MITCHELL We sang the song as children of the mystery that we hoped to one day comprehend and now, at last, we...
MISHI MCCOY Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH To be or not to be that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage chang...
LEON C. MEGGINSON To question reason is to trust it.
MITCH STOKES Another year is ending, but something is pending
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I am sensitive soul; I feel with the moon,
I use to be judged for my indifference, now I see t...
NIKKI ROWE Judge not lest ye be judged.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c...
GERMANY KENT Opportunities don’t make U turns.
JAMES J-PIERRE In a world of words, anything is possible...
LAURA WRIGHT LAROCHE What if you are wrong? What if the gods sent you, and indeed the rest of us, not because we were nev...
MARIE LU 37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON I don't spend a lot of time asking "WHY?" Instead I focus on what I should do now or how I should re...
JEFF DIXON-THE KEY TO THE KINGDOM The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Crafting something unique and logical requires trust and mutual collaboration.
STEVEN CUOCO Not everyone has the time to be normal.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA It's a a damn good day to be alive.
MICHAEL CLIFFORD The market is still waiting for HSBC results, which will have a big impact on the direction of the m...
ANDREW TO Property shares had a technical rebound, but interest rate concerns will still affect properties unt...
ANDREW TO Bank of China's results were quite good; double-digit growth can be taken as good results for a bank...
ANDREW TO The index tried to challenge 18,000 but failed, so that triggered profit taking. Tokyo's slide also ...
ANDREW TO Trading seems to be focusing on selective counters because investors are cautious amid interest rate...
ANDREW TO We're seeing a minor technical rebound after Wall Street rebounded from two days of losses. The key ...
ANDREW TO Some investors have returned to pick up the stock at bargain prices.
ANDREW TO I think the take-up for the placement is not too good and other property developers may be discourag...
ANDREW TO We are afraid that our freedoms and liberties will be infringed in the future.
ANDREW TO I think there was some minor selling pressure on telecom stocks as the market continued to see a wea...
ANDREW TO Why be an ostrich?
MARGARET MITCHELL Entrepreneur, if your distinction isn't angering the mediocre, it's actually mediocre.
ONYI ANYADO - Mrzim sve što je odricanje!
- Ni ja, Ivane, ne pristajem da se odričem. Ja hoću ceo, sav, ...
DOBRICA ĆOSIć In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been wi...
DOUGLAS ADAMS There was a terribly ghastly silence.
There was a terribly ghastly noise.
There was a terr...
DOUGLAS ADAMS To make one mistake, and then fix it. It shows, a sign that you have understood
the lesson.
DEYTH BANGER She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She s...
ELIZABETH WINDER Boring people live boring lives.
HABEEB AKANDE Can I buy you a drink when you get off?"

"I don't drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs."
ERIC JEROME DICKEY He'd never forget what Naasir had said to him when Dmitri yelled that he didn't intend to bury anoth...
NALINI SINGH Seeking survival, hostile, hidden from sight,
Deliciously flavoured - juicy, sweet bite,
E...
CLAUDIA BAKKER He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie’s door.
“Ri...
JEANIENE FROST Anything that is exclusive will be accused of elitism; living one’s dreams will be called pretenti...
FENNEL HUDSON The great risk of living is that we might not survive it.
J. ALEKSANDR WOOTTON I'm about to do something very clever and a tiny bit against the rules of the universe. It's importa...
TOMMY DONBAVAND I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON I am the instigator of my adversities but at the same time I am the architect of my success.
KARON WADDELL Try to look at causes and solve problems. Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek mili...
EQBAL AHMED ...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disput...
THOMAS JEFFERSON We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kid...
KURT VONNEGUT Another grave fault in our election system is that the campaigns are unduly strung out. [Election Ad...
JOSEPH P. HARRIS As for the politicians, like everyone else in America, they were motivated by money, not ideals.
CHARLES DICKENS Indeed, it's not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, ...
BARACK OBAMA You can tell there's an election coming soon. People are already using the word "fundamentally" in e...
BENJAMIN KANE ETHRIDGE ‎"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
- Edward R. Murrow
EDWARD R. MURROW To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to g...
THOMAS PAINE In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. The...
BILL CLINTON يا راكعين لأمريكا , أنا بريء منكم
ناجي العلي The more God is glorified the more man is energic and the more satan is weak.
INDONESIA123 until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Last words of wisdom. Whoever you were as a child, she's your future.
CHERISE WOLAS PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.

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