1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn.

Richard Strauss – Old Home Week in Gomorrah.

Man’s objection to love is that it dies hard; woman’s, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.

When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.

As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature’s elementary materials.

There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

Any man who, having a child or children he can’t support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.

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.