Quotes by H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

— H. L. Mencken

Love

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

— H. L. Mencken

Truth

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

— H. L. Mencken

Truth

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

— H. L. Mencken

Love

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

— H. L. Mencken

Courage

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

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

Life

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

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

— H. L. Mencken

Truth

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

— H. L. Mencken

Courage

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

— H. L. Mencken

Love

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

— H. L. Mencken

Truth

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

— H. L. Mencken

Happiness

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

— H. L. Mencken

Wisdom

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

— H. L. Mencken

Life