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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

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
People
Slightest
Eager
Convinced
Speech
Ready
American
Alarm
Free
Detest
Really
Alarms

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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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The worst government is the most moral.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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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.
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When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
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