Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
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Quotes by H. L. Mencken
Explore 25 verified and sourced quotes attributed to H. L. Mencken. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by H. L. Mencken
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.
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.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
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.
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
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.
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
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.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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