Quotes By H. L. Mencken

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

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

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

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.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Time stays, we go.

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

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.