Quotes By H. L. Mencken

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.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

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.

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.