Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 10

101. “A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.”

— H. L. Mencken

102. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

104. “A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”

— H. L. Mencken

105. “The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.”

— H. L. Mencken

106. “We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.”

— H. L. Mencken

107. “Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

109. “A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”

— H. L. Mencken

110. “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

111. “He who eats alone chokes alone.”

— H. L. Mencken

112. “All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.”

— H. L. Mencken

113. “The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.”

— H. L. Mencken

114. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

116. “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

117. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

120. “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

121. “Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.”

— H. L. Mencken

122. “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

123. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

125. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

132. “We must be prepared to pay a price for freedom, for no price that is ever asked for it is half the cost of doing without it.”

— H. L. Mencken

133. “No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.”

— H. L. Mencken

134. “Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.”

— H. L. Mencken

135. “All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.”

— H. L. Mencken

136. “The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.”

— H. L. Mencken

137. “The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

139. “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

— H. L. Mencken

140. “There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.”

— H. L. Mencken

141. “Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”

— H. L. Mencken

142. “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

— H. L. Mencken

143. “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

144. “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

145. “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

146. “The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.”

— H. L. Mencken

147. “Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.”

— H. L. Mencken

148. “The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

150. “I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.”

— H. L. Mencken