H. L. Mencken quotes - page 3

H. L. Mencken was an influential American journalist, essayist, and cultural critic, celebrated for his wit and sharp social commentary. His writings challenged popular beliefs and authority figures in early 20th-century America. He is remembered today as one of the most incisive critics of American culture and language. Here are 458 of his quotes:

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

H. L. Mencken

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

H. L. Mencken

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.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

H. L. Mencken

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

H. L. Mencken

All successful newpapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

H. L. Mencken

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

H. L. Mencken

Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the veriform appendix and God.

H. L. Mencken

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

H. L. Mencken

There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.

H. L. Mencken

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

H. L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

H. L. Mencken

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken

How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.

H. L. Mencken

To sum up 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10, 000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.

H. L. Mencken

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell the truth.

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 be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

H. L. Mencken