H. L. Mencken Quotes

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken

Love, Democracy, Adultery

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H. L. Mencken

Good, Men, Wise

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

Anniversary, Truth, Husband

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken

Peace, War, Until

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

Mind, Ocean, Missing

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken

Democracy, Enjoy, Confess

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

Problem, Wrong, Easy

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

Fear, Else, Wants

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken

Happy, Devil, Pay

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
H. L. Mencken

Democracy, Same, Put

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. Mencken

Liberty, Security

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
H. L. Mencken

Human, Another, Seems

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. Mencken

Poor, Poverty, Common

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H. L. Mencken

Faith, May, Belief

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken

Effort, Worth, Knowing

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. Mencken

After, Might, Worse

Life is a dead-end street.
H. L. Mencken

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken

Love, Women, Experience

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
H. L. Mencken

Marriage, Time, Women

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken

Fact, Ten, Pleasant

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
H. L. Mencken

Women, Men, Experience

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. Mencken

Human, Race, Decency

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. Mencken

Good, Impossible, Golf

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
H. L. Mencken

Work, Body, Temptation

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken

Care, Drink, Drank

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Writer

Born: September 12, 1880

Died: January 29, 1956

Links

Find on Amazon: H. L. Mencken

Cite this Page: Citation

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