1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.

Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

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

On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.