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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

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

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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.
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It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.
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We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
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