Henry Mencken Quotes (61 Quotes)

Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian business man

Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas.

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her

Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting) I can recall none in all the literature of the world.

Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love

Nothing is more patent, indeed, than the fact that charity merely converts the unfit - who, in the course of nature, would soon die out and so cease to encumber the earth - into parasites - who live on indefinitely, a nuisance and a burden to their b

Living with a dog is messy - like living with an idealist

Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness

The idea that (school-children) are happy is of a piece with the idea that the lobster in the pot is happy

Men are sad because they have to die so soon, women are sad because they were born so long ago.

He uses his sources as a drunkard uses lampposts not to light him upon his way, but to dissimulate his instability

All (zoos) actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

By an inferior man I mean one who knows nothing that is not known to every adult, who can do nothing that could not be learned by anyone in a few weeks, and who meanly admires mean things

The kind of man who wants government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

There is a bird that knows no closed season - and if he won't come down to Texas oil stock, or one-night cancer cures, or building lots in Swampshurst, he will always come down to Inspiration and Optimism, whether political, theological, pedagogical,

I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know

A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious.

If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x X y is less than y.

History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men

The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid v.

During the majority of his waking hours he is in close association with his pupils, who are admittedly his inferiors, and so he rapidly acquires the familiar, self-satisfied professorial attitude of mind.

An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. Enchantment may be.

They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks

The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility - this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots

The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth

The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly swatter.

The prophesying business is like writing fugues it is fatal to every one save the man of absolute genius

The average schoolmaster is, and always must be, an ass.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character

It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world Answer he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general

Creator a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from the risk of being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently - one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gent

Many an American Congressman comes to Washington from a district attorney's office you may be sure that he is seldom promoted because he has been jealous of the liberties of the citizen

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it

He marries best who puts it off until it is too late

The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore

The formula of the argument is simple and familiar to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.

The human race is in such a dreadful state that no rational person can talk about it without resorting to seditious and obscene language

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