Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

H. L. Mencken Writer

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Sep 12, 1880
  • Died: Jan 29, 1956

Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. Many of his books remain in print.

Mencken is known for writing The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States, and for his satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial". He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements.

As a frank admirer of German philosopher Nietzsche, he was a detractor of religion in general, populism and representative democracy, which he believed was a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. Mencken was a keen cheerleader of scientific progress, very skeptical of economic theories and critical of osteopathic/chiropractic medicine.

During and after World War I, he was sympathetic to the Germans, and was very distrustful of British propaganda.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

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

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

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

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

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

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.

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

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

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

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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

Husbands never become good they merely become proficient.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

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

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

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

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

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

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Time stays, we go.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

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.

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

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

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.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

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

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

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

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

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.