Quotes from H.L. Mencken

When somebody says it's not about the money, it's about the money.

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

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

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.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

Morality and honor are not to be confused. "The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

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

Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

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

When somebody says it's not about the money, it's about the money.

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

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

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

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

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

Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.