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

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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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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.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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Why do men go to zoos?
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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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.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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