111 Quotes by H.L. Mencken

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.