Quotes By Author
Quotations By H.L. Mencken
Age
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Alcohol
I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark. -- H. L. Mencken
American
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
American
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Beliefs
The public demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.
Conscience
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Cynicism
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
Death
Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
Doubt
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Doubt
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Faith
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
Fame
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know. -- H. L. Mencken
Forgiveness
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
Friendship
When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
Government
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth. -- H. L. Mencken
Human
Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor. -- H. L. Mencken
Individuality
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; there in they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber stamps.
Life
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
Love
Love: the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Pride
The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakable egoism.
Quotations
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well quotations.
Success
All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.