Quote

What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.

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
United
Sense
Fetched
States
Newcomers
Unmistakable
Instantly
Subtle
Thousands
Escape

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
H. L. Mencken
Image
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
H. L. Mencken
Image
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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