Henry Louis Mencken

130 quotes

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

Henry Louis Mencken

"For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman."

Henry Louis Mencken

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

Henry Louis Mencken

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

Henry Louis Mencken

"A man always blames the woman who fooled him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark."

Henry Louis 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."

Henry Louis Mencken

"If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

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

"Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."

Henry Louis Mencken

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable."

Henry Louis Mencken

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

Henry Louis Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another."

Henry Louis Mencken

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

Henry Louis Mencken

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

Henry Louis Mencken

"There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Henry Louis Mencken

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

Henry Louis Mencken