H. L. Mencken Quotes And Sayings

The Difference Between A Moral Man And A Man Of Honor Is That The Latter Regrets A Discreditable Act, Even When It Has Worked And He Has Not Been Caught.

The Difference Between A Moral Man And A Man Of Honor Is That The Latter Regrets A Discreditable Act, Even When It Has Worked And He Has Not Been Caught.

If Women Believed In Their Husbands They Would Be A Good Deal Happier And Also A Good Deal More Foolish.

Say What You Will About The Ten Commandments, You Must Always Come Back To The Pleasant Fact That There Are Only Ten Of Them.

I Believe That It Is Better To Tell The Truth Than A Lie. I Believe It Is Better To Be Free Than To Be A Slave. And I Believe It Is Better To Know Than To Be Ignorant.

Legend: A Lie That Has Attained The Dignity Of Age.

Every Election Is A Sort Of Advance Auction Sale Of Stolen Goods.

The Most Dangerous Man To Any Government Is The Man Who Is Able To Think Things Out... Without Regard To The Prevailing Superstitions And Taboos. Almost Inevitably He Comes To The Conclusion That The Government He Lives Under Is Dishonest, Insane, Intolerable.

Life Is A Constant Oscillation Between The Sharp Horns Of Dilemmas.

Whenever A Husband And Wife Begin To Discuss Their Marriage They Are Giving Evidence At A Coroner's Inquest.

It Is Not Materialism That Is The Chief Curse Of The World, As Pastors Teach, But Idealism. Men Get Into Trouble By Taking Their Visions And Hallucinations Too Seriously.

Temptation Is An Irresistible Force At Work On A Movable Body.

Every Man Sees In His Relatives, And Especially In His Cousins, A Series Of Grotesque Caricatures Of Himself.

I Confess I Enjoy Democracy Immensely. It Is Incomparably Idiotic, And Hence Incomparably Amusing.

We Must Respect The Other Fellow's Religion, But Only In The Sense And To The Extent That We Respect His Theory That His Wife Is Beautiful And His Children Smart.

It Is Now Quite Lawful For A Catholic Woman To Avoid Pregnancy By A Resort To Mathematics, Though She Is Still Forbidden To Resort To Physics Or Chemistry.

Each Party Steals So Many Articles Of Faith From The Other, And The Candidates Spend So Much Time Making Each Other's Speeches, That By The Time Election Day Is Past There Is Nothing Much To Do Save Turn The Sitting Rascals Out And Let A New Gang In.

Democracy Is Only A Dream: It Should Be Put In The Same Category As Arcadia, Santa Claus, And Heaven.

I Believe That All Government Is Evil, And That Trying To Improve It Is Largely A Waste Of Time.

Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want, And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.

I Never Lecture, Not Because I Am Shy Or A Bad Speaker, But Simply Because I Detest The Sort Of People Who Go To Lectures And Don't Want To Meet Them.

Love Is An Emotion That Is Based On An Opinion Of Women That Is Impossible For Those Who Have Had Any Experience With Them.

To Die For An Idea; It Is Unquestionably Noble. But How Much Nobler It Would Be If Men Died For Ideas That Were True!

Have You Ever Watched A Crab On The Shore Crawling Backward In Search Of The Atlantic Ocean, And Missing? That's The Way The Mind Of Man Operates.

A Sunday School Is A Prison In Which Children Do Penance For The Evil Conscience Of Their Parents.

For Centuries, Theologians Have Been Explaining The Unknowable In Terms Of The-not-worth-knowing.

Wealth - Any Income That Is At Least One Hundred Dollars More A Year Than The Income Of One's Wife's Sister's Husband.

Unquestionably, There Is Progress. The Average American Now Pays Out Twice As Much In Taxes As He Formerly Got In Wages.

Most People Are Unable To Write Because They Are Unable To Think, And They Are Unable To Think Because They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Do So, Just As They Congenitally Lack The Equipment To Fly Over The Moon.

When A New Source Of Taxation Is Found It Never Means, In Practice, That The Old Source Is Abandoned. It Merely Means That The Politicians Have Two Ways Of Milking The Taxpayer Where They Had One Before.

What Men Value In This World Is Not Rights But Privileges.

There Are Men So Philosophical That They Can See Humor In Their Own Toothaches. But There Has Never Lived A Man So Philosophical That He Could See The Toothache In His Own Humor.

A Bad Man Is The Sort Who Weeps Every Time He Speaks Of A Good Woman.

The Penalty For Laughing In A Courtroom Is Six Months In Jail; If It Were Not For This Penalty, The Jury Would Never Hear The Evidence.

Marriage Is A Wonderful Institution, But Who Would Want To Live In An Institution?

Most People Want Security In This World, Not Liberty.

I Never Smoked A Cigarette Until I Was Nine.

No Man Ever Quite Believes In Any Other Man. One May Believe In An Idea Absolutely, But Not In A Man.

If, After I Depart This Vale, You Ever Remember Me And Have Thought To Please My Ghost, Forgive Some Sinner And Wink Your Eye At Some Homely Girl.

Nobody Ever Went Broke Underestimating The Taste Of The American Public.

Love Is The Delusion That One Woman Differs From Another.

The Chief Value Of Money Lies In The Fact That One Lives In A World In Which It Is Overestimated.

As The Arteries Grow Hard, The Heart Grows Soft.

Women Have Simple Tastes. They Get Pleasure Out Of The Conversation Of Children In Arms And Men In Love.

Conscience Is The Inner Voice That Warns Us That Someone Might Be Looking.

God Is A Comedian, Playing To An Audience Too Afraid To Laugh.

The Cynics Are Right Nine Times Out Of Ten.

Puritanism. The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.

Men Have A Much Better Time Of It Than Women. For One Thing, They Marry Later; For Another Thing, They Die Earlier.

Don't Overestimate The Decency Of The Human Race.