Mencken, Henry Louis

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

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

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

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

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

"Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn't, they'd be married too."

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

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

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

"I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark."

"The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal."

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

"Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient."

"Men become civilised, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"It is evident that scepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better."

"When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative."

"Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth."

"Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favour of Judas."

"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."

"Neither sex, without some fertilisation of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour."

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

"No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not."

"The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits."

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

"The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakeable egoism."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - A Little Book in C Major

"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake." - A Mencken Chrestomathy

"Alimony-The ransom that the happy pay to the devil." - A Mencken Chrestomathy

"A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know." - A Mencken Chrestomathy

"Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety." - Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's 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." - Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks

"Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible." - Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks

"It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." - Prejudices

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - Prejudices