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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
H. L. Mencken
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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Henry Louis Mencken
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More quotes by H. L. Mencken
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
H. L. Mencken
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
H. L. Mencken
I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
H. L. Mencken
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.
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
Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
H. L. Mencken
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
H. L. Mencken
Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H. L. Mencken
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
H. L. Mencken
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
H. L. Mencken
One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
H. L. Mencken
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
H. L. Mencken
Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
H. L. Mencken
It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
H. L. Mencken
The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
H. L. Mencken
[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
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
H. L. Mencken
