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Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956), H L Mencken in short, was a US journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English.

Wisdom & Quotes

  • The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
- Prejudices: Third Series
  • Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
- Prejudices: Third Series
  • One of the crying needs of the time is for a suitable burial service for the admittedly damned.
- Prejudices
  • Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- Prejudices
  • Most philosophical treatises show the human cerebrum loaded far beyond its Plimsoll mark.
- Prejudices
  • To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler would it be if men died for ideas that were true.
- Prejudices: Fifth Series
  • The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell the truth.
- quoted in Alistair Cooke, ed., The Vintage Mencken
  • No man ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter.
- attributed
  • Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949
  • Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief efforts to trying to prove that the other is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right.
- Minority Report: Mencken's Notebooks
  • Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
- Minority Report
  • Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
- Minority Report
  • We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- Minority Report
  • War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
- Minority Report in Notebooks
  • The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- Notebooks
  • It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him.
- Minority Report
  • No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
- What is Going on in the World Now?, in American Mercury, November 1933
  • Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
- Sententiae in A Book of Burlesques
  • When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands.
- Sententiae in A Book of Burlesques
  • The average males gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
- In Defense of Women

Douglas MacArthur


Page last modified on Friday October 28, 2022 16:26:36 GMT-0000