1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.

One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.

Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.

A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.

In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion.