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H.L. Mencken Quotes
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Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention.

As a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was a detractor of religion, populism and representative democracy, which he believed to be a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress, skeptical of economic theories and critical of osteopathic and chiropractic medicine.

Mencken opposed American entry into World War I and World War II. His diary indicates that he was a racist and anti-semite, and privately used coarse language and slurs to describe various ethnic and racial groups . Mencken also at times seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism, though never in its American form. "War is a good thing," he once wrote, "because it is honest, it admits the central fact of human nature… A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid."

Mencken's longtime home in the Union Square neighborhood of West Baltimore was turned into a city museum, the H. L. Mencken House. His papers were distributed among various city and university libraries, with the largest collection held in the Mencken Room at the central branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.

✵ 12. September 1880 – 29. January 1956
H.L. Mencken photo
H.L. Mencken: 281   quotes 57   likes

H.L. Mencken Quotes

“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”

H.L. Mencken
Truth , Idea , Science

“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

H.L. Mencken

Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”

H.L. Mencken

“Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.”

H.L. Mencken
Country

“Judge — A law student who marks his own examination-papers.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Law , Funny

“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops”

H.L. Mencken

Source: Minority Report

Secret

“Historian — An unsuccessful novelist.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

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

H.L. Mencken

"Why Liberty?”, in the Chicago Tribune (30 January 1927)
1920s
Context: I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

“Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”

H.L. Mencken

“If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven oris plainly superior to God….”

H.L. Mencken

Source: In Defense Of Women

God

“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.”

H.L. Mencken

79
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Money , God , Imagination , Universe

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

H.L. Mencken book Notes on Democracy

Part 2, chapter 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw-DAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+demagogue+is+one+who+preaches+doctrines+he+knows+to+be+untrue+to+men+he+knows+to+be+idiots%22&pg=PA103#v=onepage
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and pretends to believe it himself.

Men

“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured and put into cans.”

H.L. Mencken book Notes on Democracy

1920s
Source: Notes on Democracy (1926)

Fear

“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.”

H.L. Mencken

“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”

H.L. Mencken

A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 53
1910s

Thinking

“If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.”

H.L. Mencken

Variant: If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

God

“The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.”

H.L. Mencken

“Theology — An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Effort

“Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.”

H.L. Mencken
Anniversary , Truth , Thinking

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

H.L. Mencken
Law , Freedom , Time , Fight

“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

H.L. Mencken

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s
Context: I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Truth , Lie

“Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

God , Drawing

“All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters.”

H.L. Mencken

"The Calamity of Appomattox," The American Mercury (September 1930)
1930s

Idea

“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

H.L. Mencken

Prejudices, Fourth Series, ch. 11 (1924)
1920s

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.”

H.L. Mencken

Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s

Men , Way , Freedom , Change

“Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. […] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.”

H.L. Mencken

201
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Art , Fraud , Effort , Time

“When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats.”

H.L. Mencken

Mencken quotes this in Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941) as a maxim he learned from Al Goodman
Misattributed

Water

“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”

H.L. Mencken

The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
1910s

Secret , Dreams , Heart

“I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him.”

H.L. Mencken

Men versus the Man: A Correspondence between Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H.L. Mencken, Individualist (1910), pg. 116
1910s

Life , Education , Failure

“Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.”

H.L. Mencken

"Duty Before Security", The Smart Set, June 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Women+have+a+hard+time+of+it+in+this+world+They+are+oppressed+by+man+made+laws+man+made+social+customs+masculine+egoism+the+delusion+of+masculine+superiority+Their+one+comfort+is+the+assurance+that+even+though+it+may+be+impossible+to+prevail+against+man+it+is+always+possible+to+enslave+and+torture+a+man%22&pg=RA1-PA49#v=onepage
"The Incomparable Buzzsaw", Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=hy47AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Women+have+a+hard+time+of+it+in+this+world+They+are+oppressed+by+man+made+laws+man+made+social+customs+masculine+egoism+the+delusion+of+masculine+superiority+Their+one+comfort+is+the+assurance+that+even+though+it+may+be+impossible+to+prevail+against+man+it+is+always+possible+to+enslave+and+torture+a+man%22&pg=PA237#v=onepage (1920)
1910s

Women , World , Law , Time

“Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.”

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun (4 April 1927)
1920s

World

“Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.”

H.L. Mencken

A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 51
1910s

God

“Platitude — An idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Idea

“Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.”

H.L. Mencken

Source: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 4

Time

“Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy—a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , Democracy , Game

“Of all the religions ever devised by the great practical jokers of the race, [Christianity] is the one that offers most for the least money, so to speak, to the inferior man. It starts out by denying his inferiority in plain terms: all men are equal in the sight of God. It ends by erecting that inferiority into a sort of actual superiority: it is a merit to be stupid, and miserable, and sorely put upon—of such are the celestial elect. Not all the eloquence of a million Nietzsches, nor all the painful marshalling of evidence of a million Darwins and Harnacks, will ever empty that great consolation of its allure. The most they can ever accomplish is to make the superior orders of men acutely conscious of the exact nature of it, and so give them armament against the contagion.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , Money , God , Pain

“Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A: Why do men go to zoos?”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Men

“Lawyer — One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“No man, I suppose, ever admits to himself candidly that he gets his living in a dishonourable way.”

H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

Way

“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history… But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth". It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”

H.L. Mencken

Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 8

People , Beauty , Imagination , History

“One hears murmurs against Mussolini on the ground that he is a desperado: the real objection to him is that he is a politician. Indeed, he is probably the most perfect specimen of the genus politician on view in the world today. His career has been impeccably classical. Beginning life as a ranting Socialist of the worst type, he abjured Socialism the moment he saw better opportunities for himself on the other side, and ever since then he has devoted himself gaudily to clapping Socialists in jail, filling them with castor oil, sending blacklegs to burn down their houses, and otherwise roughing them. Modern politics has produced no more adept practitioner.”

H.L. Mencken

"Mussolini" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (3 August 1931), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 34
1930s

Life , World , Housing , Perfection