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Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

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
Death
Piety
Become
Weaknesses
Trying
Virtues
Make
Rage
Always
Weakness
Men
Atheism
Life
Virtue
Fear

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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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The worst government is the most moral.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
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