223 quotes
Remorse — Regret that one waited so long to do it.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x × y is less than y.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic.
Notes on Democracy (1926)
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone-that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is, far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous.
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic.
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
All the branches of Christianity suffer by the fact that they seem to be unable to take in the greatest contribution of the modern world to ethical theory, to wit, the concept of a moral obligation to be intelligent.
The Gist of Mencken (1990)
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. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.
Prejudices, First Series (1919)
Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; 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, most of them imaginary.
In Defense of Women (1918)
Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them.
Notes on Democracy (1926)
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Truth — Something somehow discreditable to someone.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night….He had no ideas, but he was not a nuisance.
Mencken: A Life by Fred Hobson (1994)
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)