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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.
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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Many
York
Years
Single
Things
Week
Suffice
Would
Year
Denmark
Upon
Kingdom
Evil
Kingdoms
Running
Useless
Money
Spent
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
H. L. Mencken
The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
H. L. Mencken
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
H. L. Mencken
I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
H. L. Mencken
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
H. L. Mencken
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime he is a good citizen driven to despair.
H. L. Mencken
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
H. L. Mencken
It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
H. L. Mencken
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
H. L. Mencken
If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
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Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
H. L. Mencken
One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
H. L. Mencken
Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
H. L. Mencken
All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.
H. L. Mencken
Nature abhors a moron.
H. L. Mencken
Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
H. L. Mencken
Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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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