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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.

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
Boys
Imagine
Getting
Genuinely
Even
Cynical
Much
Save
Mind
Intelligent
Good
Habit
College

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To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
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Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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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.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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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.
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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.
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