Quotes By H. L. Mencken

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

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.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

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 national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.