Quotes by H.L. Mencken

“Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for th...”

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

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

“Happiness is the china shop love is the bull. ”

“Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the past, and o...”

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 off...”

“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.”

“Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?”

“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problemneat, plausible, and wrong.”

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”

“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”

“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond end...”

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”

“It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the ...”

“When somebody says its not about the money, its about the money.”

“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”