Quote

Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.

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
Upon
Likely
War
Whenever
Political
Standards
Government
Drug
Scoundrel
Life
Liberty
Scoundrels
Justice
Impose
Law
Attempts
Moral
Users

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
H. L. Mencken
Image
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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
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