H. L. Mencken citations (282 citations, Page 9)

A. J. Liebling, in "Do you belong in journalism?", The New Yorker (14 May 1960); sometimes paraphrased : Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
Misattributed

“Here is tragedy—and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.”

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H.L. Mencken

"More Tips for Novelists" in the Chicago Tribune (2 May 1926)
1920s

“Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?”

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H.L. Mencken

Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
1920s

“The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.”

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H.L. Mencken

Source: 1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956), p. 217-218

“When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.”

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H.L. Mencken

Newspaper Days: 1899-1906 (1941)
1940s–present

“Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.”

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H.L. Mencken

A Book of Burlesques (1916)
1910s

“My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic. The normal human society is very little troubled by them. Whenever a new one appears the average man displays signs of dismay and resentment. The only way he can take in such a new idea is by translating it crudely into terms of more familiar ideas. That translation is one of the chief functions of politicians, not to mention journalists. They devote themselves largely to debasing the ideas launched by their betters. This debasement is intellectually reprehensible, but probably necessary to carry on the business of the world.”

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H.L. Mencken

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.”

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H.L. Mencken

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I propose that it shall be no longer malum in se for a citizen to pummel, cowhide, kick, gouge, cut, wound, bruise, maim, burn, club, bastinado, flay, or even lynch a [government] jobholder, and that it shall be malum prohibitum only to the extent that the punishment exceeds the jobholder’s deserts. The amount of this excess, if any, may be determined very conveniently by a petit jury, as other questions of guilt are now determined. The flogged judge, or Congressman, or other jobholder, on being discharged from hospital — or his chief heir, in case he has perished — goes before a grand jury and makes a complaint, and, if a true bill is found, a petit jury is empaneled and all the evidence is put before it. If it decides that the jobholder deserves the punishment inflicted upon him, the citizen who inflicted it is acquitted with honor. If, on the contrary, it decides that this punishment was excessive, then the citizen is adjudged guilty of assault, mayhem, murder, or whatever it is, in a degree apportioned to the difference between what the jobholder deserved and what he got, and punishment for that excess follows in the usual course.”

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H.L. Mencken

"The Malevolent Jobholder," The American Mercury (June 1924), p. 156
1920s

“[Paul Patterson and I] soon got on the subject of the war, and I said flatly that I thought the Sun's course was not only ignorant and absurd, but also not a little disingenuous. It had gone over to the English in an abject and ignominious fashion, against all reason and all the obvious facts. Worse, it had yielded supinely to the most outrageous fiats of the Roosevelt censorship, and had even exceeded them. This shook Patterson somewhat, for he likes to think of himself as a news editor, and he insisted that in handling the war news the Sun had done good work.”

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H.L. Mencken

March 17, 1944
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

“Truth — Something somehow discreditable to someone.”

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H.L. Mencken

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“When I hear artists or authors making fun of business men, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.”

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H.L. Mencken

Reported in various works including Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote It Completely!: World Reference Guide to More Than 5,500 Memorable Quotes from Law and Literature (1998), p. 113, which cites the quote to MENCKEN, HL, A New Dictionary of Quotations, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957, p. 134. However, the authorship of the quote does not lie with any work original to Mencken, and was previously reported as an anonymous quote.
Misattributed