“ 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. H.L. Mencken
“ 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 office… H.L. Mencken
“ 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. H.L. Mencken
“ A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it. H.L. Mencken
“ There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese. H.L. Mencken
“ The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made… H.L. Mencken
“ Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact. H.L. Mencken
“ The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. H.L. Mencken
“ The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. 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 their… H.L. Mencken
“ Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what is told regardless of what is right. H.L. Mencken
“ We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease. H.L. Mencken
“ 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 v… H.L. Mencken
“ Race relations never improve in war time; they always worsen. And it is when the boys come home the Ku Klux Klans are organized. I believe with George Schuyler that the only really feasible way to imp… H.L. Mencken
“ 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
“ 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
