Quote

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

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
Knowledge
Average
American
Worse
Times
Media
Best
Says
Better
Sort
Even
Quite
Sinclair
Called
Newspaper
Belief
Newspapers

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Why do men go to zoos?
H. L. Mencken
Image
Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
H. L. Mencken
Image
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
H. L. Mencken