A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with
-- even if he drank.
-- H.L. Mencken
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with
-- even if he drank.
-- H.L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably
not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H.L. Mencken
The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
the worst cigars.
-- H. L. Mencken
“The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.”
-- H.L. Mencken
Adultery is the application of democracy to love
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°2
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is
simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom.
-- H.L. Mencken
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
“There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearence; he somehow
seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
actor, and clad in immaculate linen.”
-- H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. 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.
-- H. L. Mencken
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
-- H. L. Mencken
Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it
appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down,
and its salient virtuosi a gang of umitigated scoundrels? Then let us
not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickel the midriff, its
incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
-- H.L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and
they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment
to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
-- H.L. Mencken
“I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.”
- H. L. Mencken
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°3
College football is a game which would be much more
interesting if the faculty played instead of the students,
and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would
be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and
simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to
humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°9
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°1
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H.L. Mencken, 1930
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°4
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of
Jackals by Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later;
for another thing they die earlier.
-- H.L. Mencken
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... The United States
has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an
intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record
of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.
--- H. L. Mencken
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
- H. L. Mencken
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
-- H. L. Mencken
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty
played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees
played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks,
and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken