223 quotes
Democratic man can understand the aims and aspirations of capitalism; they are, greatly magnified, simply his own aims and aspirations.
Notes on Democracy (1926)
Jury — A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
For all his compassion for family and close friends he lacked a larger compassion, one that embraced people whom he did not know or care for personally.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and pretends to believe it himself.
Notes on Democracy (1926)
A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meets the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.
The American Language (1919)
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.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
A Book of Burlesques (1916)
Theology — An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Judge — A law student who marks his own examination-papers.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)