Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
By Henry Louis Mencken
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia--to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
By Henry Louis Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
By Henry Louis Mencken
The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.
By Henry Louis Mencken
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.
By Henry Louis Mencken
The fact that I have no remedy for the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong possibility that yours is a fake.
By Henry Louis Mencken
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
By Henry Louis Mencken
School days are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common sense and common decency.
By Henry Louis Mencken
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosiac, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill.
By Henry Louis Mencken
It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office.
By Henry Louis Mencken
For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
By Henry Louis Mencken
But any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood, and that is what happened to Jesus.
By Henry Louis Mencken
Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too.
By Henry Louis Mencken
A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic.
By Henry Louis Mencken
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.
By Henry Louis Mencken
A man always blames the woman who fooled him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
By Henry Louis Mencken
A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters Dear Sir (or Madame) You may be right.
By Henry Louis Mencken