223 quotes
Equality before the law is probably forever inattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
Newspaper Days: 1899-1906 (1941)
No government as such is ever in favor of the freedom of the individual.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Misogynist — A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties.
Prejudices, First Series (1919)
The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
He can hope for little help from other men of his own kind, for they have battles of their own to fight.
Notes on Democracy (1926)
I have believed all my life in free thought and free speech—up to and including the utmost limits of the endurable.
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
Minority Report (1956)
A society made up of the individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic.
Minority Report (1956)
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
EVIL. That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
A Book of Burlesques (1924)
All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Lawyer — One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Self-respect — The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Democrats are always happy. Democracy is a sort of laughing gas. It will not cure anything, perhaps, but it unquestionably stops the pain.