Quote

The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

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
Liberty
Stretch
Work
Cherish
Really
Quit
Men
Quitting
Cherishes
Labour
Scratch
Stress
Scratches
Sun
Inferior
Labor
Inferiors

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
H. L. Mencken
Image
Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
H. L. Mencken
Image
The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken
Image
War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
H. L. Mencken
Image
They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
H. L. Mencken