h l mencken quotes

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably
not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H.L. Mencken

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to drink with
-- even if he drank.
-- H.L. Mencken

"The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."
-- H.L. Mencken

The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
the worst cigars.
-- H. L. Mencken

"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearence; he somehow
seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
actor, and clad in immaculate linen."
-- H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan

Adultery is the application of democracy to love
-- H.L. Mencken on Murphy n°2

Say what you will about the ten commandments; you must always come back to the
pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

-- H. L. Mencken

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is
simple, neat, and wrong.

-- H. L. Mencken

"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
- H. L. Mencken

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

-- H. L. Mencken

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom.
-- H.L. 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.
-- H. L. Mencken

Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it
appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down,
and its salient virtuosi a gang of umitigated scoundrels? Then let us
not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickel the midriff, its
incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
-- H.L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and
they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment
to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
-- H.L. Mencken

College football is a game which would be much more
interesting if the faculty played instead of the students,
and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would
be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and
simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to
humanity.

-- H. L. Mencken

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930

There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H.L. Mencken, 1930

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of
Jackals by Jackasses.

-- H. L. Mencken

I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
-- H.L. Mencken