H.L. Mencken: Man

H.L. Mencken was American journalist and writer. Explore interesting quotes on man.
H.L. Mencken: 562 quotes58 likes

“No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.”

H.L. Mencken

&quot;Masculum et Feminam Creavit Eos,&quot; http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&amp;q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&amp;pg=PA337#v=onepage Ch. 30: Sententiæ http://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&amp;q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&amp;pg=PT1176#v=onepage <br class="br">1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

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

H.L. Mencken

Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

“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

“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.

“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

“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

“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

“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

&quot;Duty Before Security&quot;, The Smart Set, June 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&amp;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&amp;pg=RA1-PA49#v=onepage <br class="br">&quot;The Incomparable Buzzsaw&quot;, Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=hy47AAAAYAAJ&amp;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&amp;pg=PA237#v=onepage (1920) <br class="br">1910s

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom... [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.”

H.L. Mencken

As quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii
1940s–present

“The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.”

H.L. Mencken

Chicago Tribune (23 May 1926)
1920s

“The American is marked, in fact, by precisely the habits of mind and act that one would look for in a man insatiably ambitious and yet incurably fearful, to wit, the habits, on the one hand, of unpleasant assertiveness, of somewhat boisterous braggardism, of incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity, caution and subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as if he stood ready to defend them with his last drop of blood, and forever yielding them up at the first demand.”

H.L. Mencken

The American Credo: A Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)
1920s

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."”

H.L. Mencken

418
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.”

H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.”

H.L. Mencken

Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun (June 29th, 1925), The Impossible Mencken
1920s

“To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.”

H.L. Mencken

"Coda" from Smart Set (December 1920)
1920s