Facts about H. L. Mencken 
Summary
H. L. Mencken was a famous Writer from USA, who lived between September 12, 1880 and January 29, 1956. He became 75 years old.
Biography
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, editor, satirist and critic who was biting sharp in their analysis of American life and culture. He was also a literary scholar in American literature.
Mencken, known as "the sage from Balitmore," is considered one of the most influential American writers and pros in the first half of the 1900s.
Mencken wrote a great work The American Language (The American language), a strong pain in many volumes that analyzed how English was spoken and practiced in the United States. He was also known for his satirical reporting from the Scopes trial,("State Tennessee vs. Scopes"), a pioneering American litigation in 1925, where a biology teacher in high school, John T.Scopes, was accused of having violated the state Tennessee Butler law that made it illegal to teach evolution. Mencken renamed the trial to "Monkey trial", meaning "monkey trial". In addition to his literary skills were Mencken known for his controversial ideas. During both world wars were his sympathies on the German side, and he was very distrustful of what he characterized as "British propaganda".
He was an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, and wrote a major work which analyzed the German philosopher's texts. He wrote many articles on society, literature, music, prominent politicians, so-called experts, temperance, and was particularly critical of the anti-intellectual, bigotry, populism, Christian fundamentalism, creationism, organized religion, the question of the existence of God, and so-called alternative medicine. He was a keen admirer of scientific progress, but very skeptical of economic theories. Zodiac etc.
He is born under the zodiac virgo, who is known for Analyzing, Practical, Reflective, Observation, Thoughtful.
Our collection contains 124 quotes who is written / told by L. Mencken, under the main topics: Love, History, Marriage, Men, Politics.
Related authors: Friedrich Nietzsche
Source / external links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
Famous quotes by H. L. Mencken (124)
"Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop"
"Historian: an unsuccessful novelist"
"Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too"
"Honor is simply the morality of superior men"
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary"
"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"
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office"
"We must be willing to pay a price for freedom"
"There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good"
"One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring"
"Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas"
"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods"
"I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk"
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable"
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under"
"Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in"
"We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine"
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable"
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"
"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"
"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously"
"I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them"
"Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man"
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats"
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard"
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom"
"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught"
"Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them"
"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense"
"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race"
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages"
"No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight"
"Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed"
"It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry"
"I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine"
"I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs"
"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods"
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten"
"Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself"
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage"
"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable"
"A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank"
"A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas"
"A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground"
"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier"
"A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in"
"A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married"
"A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them"
"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers"
"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar"
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin"
"A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there"
"A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman"
"Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love"
"Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience"
"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it"
"Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest"
"When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands"
"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before"
"What men value in this world is not rights but privileges"
"Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband"
"There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor"
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing"
"The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression"
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule"
"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 penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence"
"The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral"
"The only really happy folk are married women and single men"
"The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt"
"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line"
"Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body"
"Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse"
"Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him"
"Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious"
"Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them"
"Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"
"Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince"
"Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true"
"Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian"
"Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon"
"Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong"
"Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier"
"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"
"Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago"
"Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on"
"Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly"
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence"
"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another"
"It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf"
"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"
"It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man"
"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man"
"It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause"
"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice"
"In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one"
"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"
"In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft"
"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time"
"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time"
"Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ"
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup"
"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it"
"All government, of course, is against liberty"
"Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil"
"Adultery is the application of democracy to love"
"A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents"
"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone"
"Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient"
"Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates"
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good"
"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end"
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing"
"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven"
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses"
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance"
"Criticism is prejudice made plausible"
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking"
"Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends"
"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies"
"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"
"As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft"
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