The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. - H.L. Mencken
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. - H.L. Mencken
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it. - H.L. Mencken
If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder. - H.L. Mencken
When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money. - H.L. Mencken
We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease. - H.L. Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. - H.L. Mencken
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident. - H.L. Mencken
There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese. - H.L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? - H.L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull. - H.L. Mencken
Qualsiasi persona normale di tanto in tanto prova la tentazione di sputarsi nelle mani, issare la bandiera nera e cominciare a tagliare le gole. - 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
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less. - H.L. Mencken
A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it. - H.L. Mencken
Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right. - H.L. Mencken
You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. - H.L. Mencken
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. - H.L. Mencken
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians. - H.L. Mencken
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens. - H.L. Mencken
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. - H.L. Mencken
On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women. - H.L. Mencken
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not. - H.L. Mencken
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. - H.L. Mencken
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. - H.L. Mencken
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. - 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
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. - H.L. Mencken
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind. - H.L. Mencken
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. - H.L. Mencken
Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the past, and one must study very carefully the technic of the chief current professionals. - 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
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. - 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
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. - H.L. Mencken
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. - H.L. Mencken
Injustice is relativelyl easy to bear; what stings is justice. - H.L. Mencken
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges. - H.L. Mencken