Quotes from H. L. Mencken

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all knowledge is moonshine.

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy.

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

The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular.

In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.

It is more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.

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

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

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.

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

If I ever mary, it will be on a suddn impulse - as aman shoots himself

'Tis more blessed to give than to receive for example wedding presents.

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.

Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.