1,045 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.