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.

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

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

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

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

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

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

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

Husbands never become good they merely become proficient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Time stays, we go.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

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

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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

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

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.

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

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

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.