When we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the sun, that the telephone has enabled us to hear 2,000 miles and that the x-rays have enabled us to see through flesh and bone, we must admit without reservation, that our power of perception, at some future day, may be infinite. And if we admit this we must admit the essential possibility of the superman.


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

I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
Convinced that we're living the whole time that we're dying.
We decide to go out walking the wh...
TEGAN QUIN
If we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a...
ARUNDHATI ROY
If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th...
GARY F EVANS...
If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y...
GARY F EVANS...
Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU
The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ...
THOMAS HARRIS
Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD
We currently have a sustained operational atmospheric observing system that has enabled us to dramat...
D. JAMES BAKER
We currently have a sustained operational atmospheric observing system that has enabled us to dramat...
D. JAMES BAKER
That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it.
EMINEM
We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the...
RICHARD ROHR
The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
We played much better defensively. We put more pressure on the ball and forced a lot of turnovers. T...
TEVESTER ANDERSON
If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history be...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
The new construction gave us a chance to correct some of the things that we didn't have before. It a...
DENNIS KRUEGER
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. S...
CESAR CHAVEZ
Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you'r...
MAYA ANGELOU
We embraced the technology from the beginning and became specialists. This has enabled us to create ...
JOSE SENA
Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th...
DEYTH BANGER
The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on...
DOUGLAS HURD
The more we give, the more we reap the benefits of feeling good in helping others. We are all capabl...
ANGIE KARAN
How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL
We did our own parking analysis and found there was far more parking than necessary. This enabled us...
EMILY GROOME
Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it i...
JULIA CAMERON
With Katrina, the fact that it came and left very quickly enabled us to get out of the gate very qui...
GEISHA WILLIAMS
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that e...
ZIG ZIGLAR
A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
In the second half we made a real effort to get the ball out wider and that enabled us to control th...
GRANT MACKENZIE
The discovery of the telephone has made us acquainted with many strange phenomena. It has enabled us...
WILLIAM HENRY PREECE
2005 was a milestone year for us, as we completed our first full year as a public company. Our growt...
BILL BAYLESS
Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT
The profound ability to use aural and written language has enabled our species to collectively explo...
KATHERINE VUCICEVIC
We admit that no violations of the law have been recorded. If there was some additional data, we wou...
ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS
...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact ...
JACK KEROUAC
Of course you are American,' he said, and waived his hand, like waving away the sentiment. 'What oth...
TONY D'SOUZA
We should not blame people by the mistakes of others.
DANIEL MELGAçO
In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible - that there are powers beyond us. To admit re...
DAVID WHYTE
May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
To win the division, I was very proud of that, ... But on the other side of the coin, what enabled u...
JOE TORRE
If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we...
SAM HARRIS
Put your mind to it and you will do it. This is how the impossible become possible
SOTONYE ANGA
If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we r...
HENRI POINCARE
Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be...
GARY F EVANS...
In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON
It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON
We took the view early in the case that we were going to take full advantage of every opportunity th...
JAKE BRACE
Preparation is good for success and it is a noble thing to prepare excellently for success, but in r...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Rebounding enabled us to win that game.
KAY YOW
The knowledge of this marvelous period has made faith far easier from an intellectual standpoint, an...
SIR WILFRED T. GRENFELL
Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empirici...
MEGAN CHANCE
All of us have schnozzles . . . if not in our faces, then in our character, minds or habits. When we...
JIMMY DURANTE
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helpl...
URSULA K. LE GUIN
I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than...
NEIL GAIMAN
We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL
She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.
DIANA WYNNE JONES
The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a...
NEIL GAIMAN
What is the Other?" they ask.
The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not ...
PAULO COELHO
I'm already gone. I died that night on the side of that road with my sister.
TRISHA LEAVER
Perfection isn't everything," she said as she turned and walked away. "I think the flaws are what ma...
TRISHA LEAVER
With her I'd buried myself, every memory of who I was now, six feet under with the sister I'd put th...
TRISHA LEAVER
We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live.
The universe may for...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
We hate Simple Minds. They were no.1 in our Top Five Bands or Musicians who will have to be shot com...
NICK HORNBY
It's about a series of incidents that give rise to the impression that we have enabled grey zones an...
GUIDO WESTERWELLE
I had spared the stag's life. The power of that life belonged to me as surely as it belonged to the ...
LEIGH BARDUGO
2005 was a milestone year for us as we completed our first full year as a public company. Our growth...
BILL BAYLESS
The steady, constant pace of product launches we have brought to market has enabled us to reach two ...
GARY DILTS
One of life's most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn't do our homework, that we ...
MERLIN OLSEN
Even after the dehadhyas (the belief that 'I am the body') has gone, people will say, "I saw you eat...
DADA BHAGWAN
Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it wer...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
We've been getting better as we go along. We might be winning if we'd been able to get better starts...
RUSSELL COUTTS
The doubt has the mysterious power to bring out the hidden reality of life.
ANUJ SOMANY
Hey you the "Supreme Power Within Myself" uplift my soul that I make no more mistakes and patiently ...
NEHA KOTHARI
If you look at a stream or river and close your eyes it will be amazing the flow of ideas that will ...
GARY F EVANS...
The power of man;Man does not only have the power to accomplish great & unbelievable things in life,...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Acknowledge and express your mistakes so you can prove to yourself and others that you can learn and...
SERGIO ORTIZ
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
We will always apply the same principles of collective security, prudent caution, and superior weapo...
THEODORE C. SORENSEN
Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spe...
NANCY SNOW
Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulg...
KAREN ARMSTRONG
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 had forgotten that God, or the world, or whatever carves the rules in stone, doesn't give you time...
TANA FRENCH
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achie...
MAYA ANGELOU
Anger - a beast within us that needs taming.
SARU SINGHAL
(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has i...
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
When each and every believer rises up to serve others and function according to their capacity, the ...
HENRY HON
Percy was getting tired of water.
If he said that aloud, he would probably get kicked out of Po...
RICK RIORDAN
Hail to you gods, on that day of the great reckoning. Behold me, I have come to you, without sin, wi...
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in t...
THE WORK OF THE CHARIOT
Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT
Our work is before us. It cannot be passed to future legislatures and must not be passed to future g...
RICK PERRY
It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II

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 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
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