Henry Louis Mencken famous quotes, aphorisms and thoughts part 2 by the World of English blog and Carl William Brown
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
H.L. Mencken
Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
H.L. Mencken
I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H.L. 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.
H.L. Mencken
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
H.L. Mencken
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
Henry Louis Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
Henry Louis Mencken
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
Henry Louis 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.
Henry Louis Mencken
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
Henry Louis Mencken
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
Henry Louis Mencken
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.
Henry Louis Mencken
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
Henry Louis Mencken
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
Henry Louis Mencken
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
Henry Louis Mencken
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
Henry Louis Mencken
Every man is his own hell.
Henry Louis Mencken
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
Henry Louis Mencken
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
Henry Louis Mencken
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
Henry Louis Mencken
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.
Henry Louis Mencken
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
Henry Louis Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
Henry Louis Mencken
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
Henry Louis Mencken
Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
Henry Louis Mencken
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
Henry Louis Mencken
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
Henry Louis Mencken
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
Henry Louis Mencken
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.
Henry Louis Mencken
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
Henry Louis Mencken
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
Henry Louis Mencken
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
Henry Louis Mencken
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
Henry Louis Mencken
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
Henry Louis Mencken
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
Henry Louis Mencken
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
Henry Louis Mencken
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
Henry Louis Mencken
Time stays, we go.
Henry Louis Mencken
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
Henry Louis Mencken
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
Henry Louis Mencken
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
Henry Louis Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
Henry Louis Mencken
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
Henry Louis Mencken
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Henry Louis Mencken
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
Henry Louis Mencken
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
Henry Louis Mencken
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
Henry Louis Mencken
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Henry Louis Mencken
