Famous Henry Mencken Quotations

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"...the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin"
by Henry Mencken
"A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters Dear Sir (or Madame) You may be right."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers"
by Henry Mencken
"A man always blames the woman who fooled him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood"
by Henry Mencken
"Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"But any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood, and that is what happened to Jesus."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking"
by Henry Mencken
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard"
by Henry Mencken
"For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing"
by Henry Mencken
"For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one"
by Henry Mencken
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good"
by Henry Mencken
"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable"
by Henry Mencken
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place"
by Henry Mencken
"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Legend a lie that has attained the dignity of age."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosiac, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Love is like war easy to begin but very hard to stop."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence"
by Henry Mencken
"Love is the triump of imagination over intelligence."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? by"
by Henry Mencken
"No man ever quite believes in any other man."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"
by Henry 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"
by Henry Mencken
"Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"
by Henry Mencken
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth"
by Henry Mencken
"School days are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common sense and common decency."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them"
by Henry Mencken
"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated"
by Henry Mencken
"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"
by Henry Mencken
"The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakeable egoism"
by Henry Mencken
"The fact that I have no remedy for the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong possibility that yours is a fake."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office"
by Henry Mencken
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety"
by Henry Mencken
"The only cure for contempt is countercontempt."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom"
by Henry Mencken
"The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters."
by Henry Louis 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."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia--to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess."
by Henry Louis Mencken
"To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason"
by Henry Mencken
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right"
by Henry Mencken
"Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel."
by Henry Louis Mencken


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