Quotes from Henry Louis Mencken

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

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. ~ Henry Louis Mencken

Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion.

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan.

Vertrauen ist das Gefühl, einem Menschen sogar dann glauben zu können, wenn man weiß, dass man an seiner Stelle lügen würde.

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion . . . as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place

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

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

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him

All government, of course, is against liberty.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms

God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat.

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 thinkin

The more a man dreams, the less he believes

The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the middle ages

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.