Top 500 H. L. Mencken Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “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

252. “The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

254. “All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

256. “Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.”

— H. L. Mencken

257. “Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

259. “The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.”

— H. L. Mencken

260. “The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.”

— H. L. Mencken

261. “The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true.”

— H. L. Mencken

262. “The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.”

— H. L. Mencken

263. “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

264. “I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”

— H. L. Mencken

265. “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

266. “A man’s satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife’s sister’s husband.”

— H. L. Mencken

267. “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

268. “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

269. “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

270. “Whenever “A” attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon “B,” “A” is most likely a scoundrel.”

— H. L. Mencken

271. “History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.”

— H. L. Mencken

272. “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

273. “Osteopath – One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory isto be found in the heads of those who believe it.”

— H. L. Mencken

274. “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

275. “The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

280. “The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.”

— H. L. Mencken

281. “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

282. “Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

284. “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

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

— 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. “Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.”

— H. L. Mencken

288. “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

289. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

291. “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

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

— H. L. Mencken

293. “Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.”

— H. L. Mencken

294. “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

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. “Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken

299. “The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits.”

— H. L. Mencken

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

— H. L. Mencken