Selected Mencken's quotes

It is patriotic to think! Men think, sheep follow!

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

- H.L. Mencken

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

- H.L. Mencken

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...

- H.L. Mencken

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

- H.L. Mencken

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...

- H.L. Mencken

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

- H.L. Mencken

I believe in the reality of progress.

- H.L. Mencken

I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

- H.L. Mencken

All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we’d be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.

- H.L. Mencken

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

- H.L. Mencken

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

- H.L. Mencken

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

- H.L. Mencken

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

- H.L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
- H.L. Mencken

The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

- H.L. Mencken

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.

- H.L. Mencken

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

- H.L. Mencken