Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked...”

— H. L. Mencken

52. “Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.”

— H. L. Mencken

53. “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

— H. L. Mencken

54. “On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.”

— H. L. Mencken

55. “The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.”

— H. L. Mencken

56. “Most people want security in this world, not liberty.”

— H. L. Mencken

57. “Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.”

— H. L. Mencken

58. “Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.”

— H. L. Mencken

59. “An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”

— H. L. Mencken

60. “Haste is of the devil. Slowness is of God.”

— H. L. Mencken

61. “Change is not progress.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

63. “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

64. “Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.”

— H. L. Mencken

65. “The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.”

— H. L. Mencken

66. “The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians – and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.”

— H. L. Mencken

67. “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

— H. L. Mencken

68. “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”

— H. L. Mencken

69. “A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.”

— H. L. Mencken

70. “Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.”

— H. L. Mencken

71. “Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.”

— H. L. Mencken

72. “Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.”

— H. L. Mencken

73. “The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.”

— H. L. Mencken

74. “Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”

— H. L. Mencken

75. “Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

— H. L. Mencken

76. “School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”

— H. L. Mencken

77. “Elections are futures markets in stolen property.”

— H. L. Mencken

78. “Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.”

— H. L. Mencken

79. “Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.”

— H. L. Mencken

80. “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

82. “The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.”

— H. L. Mencken

83. “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.”

— H. L. Mencken

84. “Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”

— H. L. Mencken

85. “School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.”

— H. L. Mencken

86. “For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.”

— H. L. Mencken

87. “The common man is a fool.”

— H. L. Mencken

88. “Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.”

— H. L. Mencken

89. “After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.”

— H. L. Mencken

90. “The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.”

— H. L. Mencken

91. “Nature abhors a moron.”

— H. L. Mencken

92. “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.”

— H. L. Mencken

93. “Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.”

— H. L. Mencken

94. “The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.”

— H. L. Mencken

95. “The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”

— H. L. Mencken

96. “There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.”

— H. L. Mencken

97. “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

— H. L. Mencken

98. “The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.”

— H. L. Mencken

99. “The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better papers.”

— H. L. Mencken

100. “A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.”

— H. L. Mencken