Quotes By H. L. Mencken

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

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.

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

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.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Every man is his own hell.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

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.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

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.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.