Quotes from H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.

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

Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

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

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

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.

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

No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

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

Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.