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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Liberty
Rights
Values
Privileges
Men
Libertarianism
World
Libertarian
Privilege
Leadership
Value
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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
Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
H. L. Mencken
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
H. L. Mencken
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
H. L. Mencken
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. Mencken
If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
H. L. Mencken
The worst government is the most moral.
H. L. Mencken
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
H. L. Mencken
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
H. L. Mencken
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
H. L. Mencken
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
H. L. Mencken
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken
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
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
