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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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Men
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Critics
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
H. L. Mencken
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
H. L. Mencken
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
H. L. Mencken
No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
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
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
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
H. L. Mencken
The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
H. L. Mencken
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
H. L. Mencken
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
H. L. Mencken
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
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
H. L. Mencken
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
H. L. Mencken
Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
H. L. Mencken
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken
Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken
