Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.”

— H. L. Mencken

102. “The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.”

— H. L. Mencken

103. “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

105. “Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”

— H. L. Mencken

106. “The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.”

— H. L. Mencken

107. “What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.”

— H. L. Mencken

108. “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

109. “The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

111. “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

112. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

116. “A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.”

— H. L. Mencken

117. “The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

119. “Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.”

— H. L. Mencken

120. “Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.”

— H. L. Mencken

121. “If the average man is made in God’s image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God.”

— H. L. Mencken

122. “If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we’d all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.”

— H. L. Mencken

123. “The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”

— H. L. Mencken

124. “If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y.”

— H. L. Mencken

125. “He who eats alone chokes alone.”

— H. L. Mencken

126. “Man’s objection to love is that it dies hard; woman’s, that when it is dead, it stays dead.”

— H. L. Mencken

127. “The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

129. “The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged.”

— H. L. Mencken

130. “Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.”

— H. L. Mencken

131. “There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.”

— H. L. Mencken

132. “All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.”

— H. L. Mencken

133. “Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn.”

— H. L. Mencken

134. “There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.”

— H. L. Mencken

135. “A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

137. “Remorse-Regret that one waited so long to do it.”

— H. L. Mencken

138. “The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.”

— H. L. Mencken

139. “Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.”

— H. L. Mencken

140. “All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.”

— H. L. Mencken

141. “Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.”

— H. L. Mencken

142. “There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.”

— H. L. Mencken

143. “I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty.”

— H. L. Mencken

144. “Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.”

— H. L. Mencken

145. “I can’t imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.”

— H. L. Mencken

146. “Man makes love by braggadocio, and woman makes love by listening.”

— H. L. Mencken

147. “God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.”

— H. L. Mencken

148. “The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.”

— H. L. Mencken

149. “In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.”

— H. L. Mencken

150. “Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”

— H. L. Mencken