1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

Love is like war easy to begin but very hard to stop.

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on - I am not too sure.

But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

[I]f a current president of Harvard were to preach the theology of Increase Mather he would be locked up as a lunatic, though he is still free (and expected) to merchant the prevailing political balderdash. Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas.

Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.