Mencken Quotes

Every man is a potential genius until he talks.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

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.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

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

Mencken Quotes part 2

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.

A man is never quite so vulgar as when he speaks sentimentally.

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

We are here and it is now: further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The hardest thing to believe in this world is that the American public can ever be roused to action without the proper papers being filed in triplicate and sent in quadruplicate to six different offices.

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

Love is an emotion that is based on an illusion.

There are no permanent friendships or enmities in politics.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule.

The cynics are right nine out of ten times.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

No one in this world, so far as I know…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods.

Democracy demands the ability to tell lies; and the better you are at dissembling, the higher your chances of being elected.

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.

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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Conscience is the inner voice warning us that someone may be looking.

Love is an emotion that is based on an illusion created by women to keep men alive.

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

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

A woman’s place is in the home, and if that’s where she isn’t, she should do something about it.

It is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prizefighters shaking hands.

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

The more complex the civilization, the more likely are its laws to be stupid and ill-considered.

Women really do rule the world, they just haven’t figured it out yet. When they do, and they will, we’re all in big big trouble.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.