Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
H. L. Mencken
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Limit
Oppression
Cynics
Limits
Cynic
Worst
Tolerant
Literature
Fanatics
Moral
Composed
Often
Usa
Government
Humane
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
H. L. Mencken
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H. L. Mencken
Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
H. L. Mencken
The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H. L. Mencken
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
H. L. Mencken
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H. L. Mencken
Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
H. L. Mencken
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
H. L. Mencken
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
H. L. Mencken
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
H. L. Mencken
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H. L. Mencken
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
H. L. Mencken
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
H. L. Mencken
The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
H. L. Mencken
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
H. L. Mencken
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken
In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
H. L. Mencken
Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H. L. Mencken
