Henry Mencken
| Born | September 12, 1880 Baltimore, Maryland |
|---|---|
| Died | January 29, 1956 Baltimore, Maryland |
The repository contains 50 quotes from H. L. Mencken.
Showing quotes 1 through 20 from H. L. Mencken. Page 1 2 3.
Every normal man must be tempted at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down.
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.
Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
For every difficult problem there’s a solution that’s simple, neat and wrong.
Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
Courtroom: A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
Lawyer: One who protects us from robbers by taking away the temptation.
Jury: A group of twelve people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax in man.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Truth: something somehow discreditable to someone.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prizefighters shaking hands.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nonetheless, calmly licking its chops.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
