H. L. Mencken
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.Collection: Marriage
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.Collection: War
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.Collection: Veterans
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Anniversary
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Trust
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.Collection: Music
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Government
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?Collection: Marriage
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.Collection: Relationship
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.Collection: Religion
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.Collection: Best
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.Collection: Knowledge
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.Collection: Women
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Humor
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.Collection: Experience
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.Collection: Faith
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Thankful
All government, of course, is against liberty.Collection: Government
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.Collection: Men
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.Collection: History
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.Collection: History
No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.Collection: Intelligence
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.Collection: Trust
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.Collection: Marriage
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.Collection: Women
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Politics
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.Collection: Fear
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.Collection: Love
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.Collection: War
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.Collection: Government
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.Collection: Truth
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.Collection: Great
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.Collection: Wisdom
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.Collection: Men
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.Collection: Women
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.Collection: Sports
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Government
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.Collection: Funny
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Truth