Quotes from H. L. Mencken

Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.

Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.

No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell.

Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

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.

The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essentially and next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation?

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when the fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

There comes a time when a man must spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.