Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-- and both commonly succeed, and are right. the United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent.It's history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.
H.L. Mencken
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More H.L. Mencken
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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. 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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 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