Quote

I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

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
Nation
Nations
Individual
Government
Live
Deserves
Existing
Individuals
Deserve

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
H. L. Mencken
Image
At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
Image
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah
H. L. Mencken
Image
Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
H. L. Mencken