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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

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
Longer
Public
Blackmail
Law
Executed
Process
Intimidation
Made
Manner
Discussion
Rational
Laws

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It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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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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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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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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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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