1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.

The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate...Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

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 net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.

Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.