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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
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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
Unmistakable
Instantly
Subtle
Thousands
Escape
United
Sense
Fetched
States
Newcomers
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
H. L. Mencken
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
H. L. Mencken
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H. L. Mencken
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
H. L. Mencken
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken
The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
H. L. Mencken
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
H. L. Mencken
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
H. L. Mencken
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
H. L. Mencken
A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
H. L. Mencken
The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
H. L. Mencken
The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
H. L. Mencken
The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.
H. L. Mencken
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. Mencken
If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
H. L. Mencken
It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
H. L. Mencken
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
H. L. Mencken
