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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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
Wage
Purely
Absurd
Moral
Peace
Woman
War
Reason
Ravish
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
H. L. Mencken
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
H. L. Mencken
To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
H. L. Mencken
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
H. L. Mencken
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H. L. Mencken
He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
H. L. Mencken
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H. L. Mencken
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
H. L. Mencken
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
H. L. Mencken
There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
H. L. Mencken
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
H. L. Mencken
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
H. L. Mencken
Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
H. L. Mencken
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken
