Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

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

— H. L. Mencken

104. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

110. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

112. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

115. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

117. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

Featured in: Competition Quotes

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

— H. L. Mencken

122. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

126. “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

127. “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

128. “He who eats alone chokes alone.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

130. “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

131. “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

132. “Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.”

— H. L. Mencken

133. “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

134. “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

135. “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

136. “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

137. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

140. “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

141. “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

142. “Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.”

— H. L. Mencken

143. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

146. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken