H. L. Mencken Quotes.
Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
