Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.”

— H. L. Mencken

252. “I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”

— H. L. Mencken

253. “I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.”

— H. L. Mencken

254. “The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”

— H. L. Mencken

255. “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.”

— H. L. Mencken

256. “The more a man dreams, the less he believes.”

— H. L. Mencken

257. “Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from the imbecilities of their husbands.”

— H. L. Mencken

258. “The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries – as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them – but because it was far more poetical.”

— H. L. Mencken

259. “An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor’s children devoured by wolves.”

— H. L. Mencken

260. “If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe – without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.”

— H. L. Mencken

261. “I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.”

— H. L. Mencken

262. “The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.”

— H. L. Mencken

263. “Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.”

— H. L. Mencken

264. “Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn’t pay.”

— H. L. Mencken

265. “Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.”

— H. L. Mencken

266. “My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought...”

— H. L. Mencken

267. “Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.”

— H. L. Mencken

268. “A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.”

— H. L. Mencken

269. “God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.”

— H. L. Mencken

270. “No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.”

— H. L. Mencken

271. “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”

— H. L. Mencken

272. “The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.”

— H. L. Mencken

273. “I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.”

— H. L. Mencken

274. “The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.”

— H. L. Mencken

275. “A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.”

— H. L. Mencken

276. “Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.”

— H. L. Mencken

277. “A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.”

— H. L. Mencken

278. “How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman’s laugh.”

— H. L. Mencken

279. “Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.”

— H. L. Mencken

280. “On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.”

— H. L. Mencken

281. “Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.”

— H. L. Mencken

282. “The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”

— H. L. Mencken

283. “One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.”

— H. L. Mencken

284. “If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say.”

— H. L. Mencken

285. “A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.”

— H. L. Mencken

286. “Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.”

— H. L. Mencken

287. “Anyhow, the hole in the donut is at least digestible.”

— H. L. Mencken

288. “Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.”

— H. L. Mencken

289. “The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.”

— H. L. Mencken

290. “Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.”

— H. L. Mencken

291. “Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.”

— H. L. Mencken

292. “The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.”

— H. L. Mencken

293. “The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.”

— H. L. Mencken

294. “To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse.”

— H. L. Mencken

295. “They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.”

— H. L. Mencken

296. “New York: A third-rate Babylon.”

— H. L. Mencken

297. “A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

— H. L. Mencken

298. “The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.”

— H. L. Mencken

299. “What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?”

— H. L. Mencken

300. “I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.”

— H. L. Mencken