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H. L. Mencken citations
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Henry Louis Mencken , plus connu sous le nom de H. L. Mencken, est un journaliste, linguiste, satiriste, critique social et un libre penseur, surnommé « le sage de Baltimore » ou encore « le Nietzsche américain ». Il est souvent considéré comme l'un des écrivains américains les plus influents du XXe siècle. À une époque de sa carrière, les Américains l'avaient désigné comme leur plus brillant esprit et critique littéraire hors pair.

Mencken est probablement plus connu aujourd'hui pour son ouvrage The American Language, une étude de plusieurs volumes sur la façon dont l'anglais est parlé aux États-Unis, ainsi que pour son reportage satirique sur le procès Scopes, qu'il appelait le « procès du singe ». Wikipedia  

✵ 12. septembre 1880 – 29. janvier 1956
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H. L. Mencken: 282   citations 0   J'aime

H. L. Mencken Citations

“La convention sociale la plus curieuse de la formidable époque que nous vivons est celle selon laquelle les opinions religieuses doivent être respectées. L'évidence des effets pervers d'une telle idée doit être claire pour tout le monde. Tout ce qu'elle permet, c'est 1) de jeter un voile de sainteté sur ces opinions qui sont une complète violation de la décence intellectuelle, et 2) de transformer tout théologien en libertin patenté. […] En fait il n'y a rien dans les opinions religieuses qui justifie qu'elles dussent bénéficier de plus de respect que les autres. Au contraire elles ont tendance à être remarquablement stupide. […] Non, il n'y a rien de notable ni de digne dans les idées religieuses. Elles aboutissent pour la plupart à un tissu de non-sens particulièrement puéril et assommant.”

H. L. Mencken
idée , monde , Sens

H. L. Mencken: Citations en anglais

“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”

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H.L. Mencken

Sententiæ
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“My business is not prognosis, but diagnosis. I am not engaged in therapeutics, but in pathology.”

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H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“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.”

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H.L. Mencken

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

“Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.”

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H.L. Mencken

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

“I don't have prejudice, I hate everyone equally.”

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H.L. Mencken

Attributed in The Mammoth Book of Jokes (2006) edited by Geoff Tibbals; no earlier citation yet located.
Disputed

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.”

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H.L. Mencken

On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1920-1936), p. 279
1920s

“At the bottom of Puritanism one finds envy of the fellow who is having a better time in the world, and hence hatred of him. At the bottom of democracy one finds the same thing. This is why all Puritans are democrats and all democrats are Puritans.”

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A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 76
1910s

“If there is one mental vice, indeed, which sets off the American people from all other folks who walk the earth … it is that of assuming that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that ninety-nine percent of them are wrong.”

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"The American: His New Puritanism," http://books.google.com/books?id=tn9HAAAAYAAJ&q=%22If+there+is+one+mental+vice+indeed+which+sets+off+the+American+people+from+all+other+folks+who+walk+the+earth%22+%22it+is+that+of%22+%22that+every+human+act+must+be+either+right+or+wrong+and+that+ninety-nine+percent+of+them+are+wrong%22&pg=RA1-PA87#v=onepage The Smart Set (February 1914)
1910s

“What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.”

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The American Mercury (May 1933), p. 136
1930s

“An aristocratic society may hold that a soldier or a man of learning is superior to a rich manufacturer or banker, but in a democratic society the latter are inevitably put higher, if only because their achievement is more readily comprehended by the inferior man, and he can more easily imagine himself, by some favour of God, duplicating it.”

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1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

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Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3

“Jury — A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.”

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1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Jealousy is the theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.”

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1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.”

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A Book of Burlesques (1916)
1910s

“The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.”

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Sententiæ: The Citizen and the State
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married.”

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1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell.”

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1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”

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H.L. Mencken livre The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908), pg. 217
1900s

“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.”

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35
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“Democracy is shot through with this delight in the incredible, this banal mysticism. I have alluded to its touching acceptance of the faith that progress is illimitable and ordained of God - that every human problem, in the very nature of things, may be solved.”

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1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“The professor must be an obscurantist or he is nothing; he has a special and unmatchable talent for dullness, his central aim is not to expose the truth clearly, but to exhibit his profundity, his esotericity - in brief to stagger sophomores and other professors.”

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Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 15 "The Dismal Science"

“It is moral by his code to get into office by false pretences. It is moral to change convictions overnight. Anything is moral that furthers the main concern of his soul, which is to keep a place at the public trough.”

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H.L. Mencken

On elected politicians
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“When women kiss, it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.”

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1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=TqEFAQAAIAAJ&q=%22when+women+kiss+it+always+reminds+one+of+prize+fighters+shaking+hands%22&pg=PA619#v=onepage

“Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married, too.”

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A Little Book in C major http://books.google.com/books?id=EAJbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Bachelors+know+more+about+women+than+married+men+If+they+didn't+they'd+be+married+too%22&pg=PA61#v=onepage (1916) ; later published in A Mencken Crestomathy (1949)
1910s

“A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meets the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.”

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H.L. Mencken livre The American Language

Source: The American Language (1919), Ch. 5

“To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies — the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said — there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.”

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Source: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 2

“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 × y is less than y.”

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Sententiæ: The Citizen and the State
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“…I have given my whole life to newspapers. I am convinced that they have abandoned their functions, and in an abject and ignominious manner, in the present war. Nine-tenths of them, and even more than nine-tenths, print the official blather without any attempt to scrutinize it… It is a disgraceful spectacle, but I do not believe that anything can be done about it. Roosevelt has taken the press into camp as certainly has he has taken the Supreme Court. It has ceased altogether to be independent and has become docilely official.”

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June 10, 1944
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.”

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213
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)