1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

Dachshund: A half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.

The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle

Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.

The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.