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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.

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
Missionaries
Detest
Agnostic
Almost
Much
Converts

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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
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Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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Lying is not only excusable it is not only innocent it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Why do men go to zoos?
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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