Henry Mencken Quotes

Henry Mencken Quotes. Below is a collection of famous Henry Mencken quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by Henry Mencken. Share these quotations with your friends and family.

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

By Henry Mencken

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office

By Henry Mencken

The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakeable egoism

By Henry Mencken

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them

By Henry Mencken

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth

By Henry Mencken

Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy

By Henry Mencken

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself

By Henry Mencken

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one

By Henry Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing

By Henry Mencken

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

By Henry Mencken

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking

By Henry Mencken

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood

By Henry Mencken

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers

By Henry Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin

By Henry Mencken