Quote

We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.

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
President
Washington
Two
Fundamental
Character
Fundamentals
Never
Brilliant
Profound
Considerably
Whose
Cleveland
Least
Presidents
Since
Admirable

More quotes by 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
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
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
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
Image
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
H. L. Mencken
Image
A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
H. L. Mencken
Image
But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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
Image
Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
H. L. Mencken
Image
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken