Quote

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.

H. L. Mencken

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
World
Chiefs
Curse
Pastors
Seriously
Hallucinations
Taking
Visions
Trouble
Idealism
Vision
Materialism
Teach
Pastor
Men
Chief

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
H. L. Mencken
Image
[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
H. L. Mencken
Image
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. Mencken
Image
He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
H. L. Mencken
Image
Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
H. L. Mencken
Image
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
H. L. Mencken