Quote

We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

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
Economic
Suffering
White
House
Busts
Ideas
Libertarianism
Libertarian
Suffer

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. Mencken
Image
American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
H. L. Mencken
Image
What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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
No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
H. L. Mencken
Image
This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
H. L. Mencken