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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Spiritual
Basic
War
Endless
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Human
Standing
Humans
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Existence
Bore
Fact
Bores

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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
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