Henry Louis Mencken Quotes

Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master

Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents

Adultery is the application of democracy to love

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

Men are sad because they have to die so soon, women are sad because they were born so long ago.

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.

If you want peace, work for justice.

School days are the unhappiest in the whole span if human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common sense and common decency.

The Liberals have many tails, and chase them all

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice

Remorse is regret that one waited so long to do it

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right