H.L. Mencken

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. - H.L. Mencken

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. - H.L. Mencken

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. - H.L. Mencken

Most people want security in this world, not liberty. - H.L. Mencken

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. - H.L. Mencken

All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half. - H.L. Mencken

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. - H.L. Mencken

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. - H.L. Mencken

College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks. - H.L. Mencken

Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans. - H.L. Mencken

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not. - H.L. Mencken

On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women. - H.L. Mencken

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. - H.L. Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. - H.L. Mencken

Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian. - H.L. Mencken

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight. - H.L. Mencken