H. L. Mencken

Writer

300 Quotes

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

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.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

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