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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

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
Observation
Teach
Poor
Experience
Followed
Really
Teaches
Men
Seldom
Guide
Guides

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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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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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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.
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