Quotes by Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken

American journalist and critic

Lived from: 1880 - 1956

Category: Media Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 12 september 1880 Died: 29 january 1956

  • Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
  • A bachelor is one who wants a wife, but is glad he hasn't got her.
  • Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, they die earlier.
  • A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
  • Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
  • 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.
  • A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
  • All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
  • The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
  • The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
  • For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
  • The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
  • There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
  • The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
  • On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
  • Time stays, we go.
  • One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
  • It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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  • Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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  • A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
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  • A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
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  • Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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  • Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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  • Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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  • Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
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  • No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.
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  • A bachelor is one who wants a wife, but is glad he hasn't got her.
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  • A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
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  • A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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  • A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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  • A judge is a law student who grades his own papers.
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  • A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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  • A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
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  • A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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  • A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
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  • A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
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  • A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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  • A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
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