H. L. Mencken

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

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

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

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.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

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.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

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.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

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

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

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.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The worst government is often 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.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.