Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.
H. L. Mencken
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Shows
Ethics
Rival
Men
Customers
Clergy
Atheism
Sects
Development
Rivals
Divine
Theological
Learned
Pastor
Divines
Free
Lowest
Denounce
Show
Professional
Quacks
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
H. L. Mencken
Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
H. L. Mencken
Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
H. L. Mencken
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
H. L. Mencken
The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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
Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
H. L. Mencken
Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
H. L. Mencken
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
H. L. Mencken
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. Mencken
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. Mencken
War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
H. L. Mencken
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
H. L. Mencken
The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
H. L. Mencken
A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
H. L. Mencken
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
H. L. Mencken
The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
H. L. Mencken
I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
H. L. Mencken
