3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken 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.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken 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.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
3 December 2020 H. L. Mencken All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
