H. L. Mencken

"Mowa pospolita, pospolicie prawdziwa."

"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."

"To a clergyman lying under a vow of chastity any act of sex is immoral, but his abhorrence of it naturally increases in proportion as it looks safe and is correspondingly tempting. As a prudent man, he is not much disturbed by incitations which carry their obvious and certain penalties; what shakes him is the enticement bare of any probable secular retribution. Ergo, the worst and damndest indulgence is that which goes unwhipped. So he teaches that it is no sin for a woman to bear a child to a drunken and worthless husband, even though she may believe with sound reason that it will be diseased and miserable all its life, but if she resorts to any mechanical or chemical device, however harmless, to prevent its birth, she is doomed by his penology to roast in Hell forever, along with the assassin of orphans and the scoundrel who forgets his Easter duty."

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

"Theology — An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing."

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

"One hears murmurs against Mussolini on the ground that he is a desperado: the real objection to him is that he is a politician. Indeed, he is probably the most perfect specimen of the genus politician on view in the world today. His career has been impeccably classical. Beginning life as a ranting Socialist of the worst type, he abjured Socialism the moment he saw better opportunities for himself on the other side, and ever since then he has devoted himself gaudily to clapping Socialists in jail, filling them with castor oil, sending blacklegs to burn down their houses, and otherwise roughing them. Modern politics has produced no more adept practitioner."

"I well recall my emotions when I came upon the grave of Beethoven in the Central Friedhof, with its incomparable guard of honor — Mozart, Schubert, Gluck, Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Johann Strauss!"

"Remorse — Regret that one waited so long to do it."

"The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace."

"Misogynist — A man who hates women as much as women hate one another."

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

"A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed."

"No man can get anywhere in this world in any really and endurable manner without some recourse to books."

"Fascism is not likely to be identical with the kinds on tap in Germany, Italy and Russia; indeed, it is very apt to come in under the name of anti-Fascism."

"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 of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms."

"The state — or, to make the matter more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

"Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time. You will never convince the average farmer's mare that the late Maud S. was not dreadfully immoral."

"Platitude — An idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true."

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

"Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife."

"Lawyer — One who protects us against robbers by taking away the temptation."

"Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband."

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

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

"Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh."

"Sunday — A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell."

"Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends."

"Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? A: Why do men go to zoos?"

"Nature abhors a moron."

"The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display."

"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."

"If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday."

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

"Having lived all my life in a country swarming with messiahs, I have been mistaken, perhaps quite naturally, for one myself, especially by the others. It would be hard to imagine anything more preposterous. I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts almost as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H. L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. Further than that, I have had no interest in the matter whatsoever. It has never given me any satisfaction to encounter one who said my notions had pleased him. My preference has always been for people with notions of their own. I have believed all my life in free thought and free speech—up to and including the utmost limits of the endurable."

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

"I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom. . . [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men."

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking."

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

"A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know."

"Self-respect — The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious."

"Truth — Something somehow discreditable to someone."

"Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it."

"Historian — An unsuccessful novelist."

"Judge — A law student who marks his own examination-papers."

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

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

"The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil."