Authors / H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken quotes

1880–1956 · American journalist and critic

Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore", attacked American hypocrisy for forty years in prose built for quoting.

1 real · 1 not theirs

Really theirs

1 quotes traced to H. L. Mencken's own work or a reliable witness.

Sourced

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

Source: A Little Book in C Major (1916)

Not theirs

1 famous lines credited to H. L. Mencken that are misquoted, unsourced or belong to someone else.

Misquoted

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The real words: Smoothed from Prejudices: Second Series (1920): "there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong."