H. L. Mencken
The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.Collection: Character
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.Collection: Horse
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads.Collection: Mind
A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.Collection: Religion
Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.Collection: Childhood
There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.Collection: Funny
God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.Collection: Wealth
All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.Collection: Beautiful
[Texas is] the place where there are the most cows and the least milk and the most rivers and the least water in them, and where you can look the farthest to see the least.Collection: Texas
Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."Collection: Atheist
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before.Collection: Men
New York: A third-rate Babylon.Collection: New York
For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.Collection: House
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is deadCollection: Believe
No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.Collection: Dream
Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.Collection: Son
Why do men go to zoos?Collection: Zoos
If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.Collection: Believe
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition.Collection: Government
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.Collection: Character
Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.Collection: Cutting
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.Collection: Writing
Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.Collection: Novelists
Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.Collection: Dark
Citizenship in New York is now worth no more than citizenship in Arkansas, for it is open to any applicant from the marshes of Bessarabia, and, still worse, to any applicant from Arkansas.Collection: New York
Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.Collection: Writing
[Art is] an attempt to escape from life.Collection: Art
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.Collection: Men
Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.Collection: Success
Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing and another that, but both agree unreservedly that the text itself is impeccable, and neither in the midst of the most violent disputation would venture to accuse the other of doubt. To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. Even the infidel Scopes himself is not charged with any such infamy.Collection: Men
To large numbers of American citizens life in certain parts of the country becomes intolerably hazardous. They may be seized on any pretext, however flimsy, and put to death with horrible tortures. No government pretending to be civilized can go on condoning such atrocities. Either it must make every possible effort to put them down or it must suffer the scorn and contempt of Christendom.Collection: Country
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.Collection: Work
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.Collection: Eight
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.Collection: War
Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistakeCollection: Mistake
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.Collection: Freedom
The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.Collection: Marriage
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism- in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.Collection: Life
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead.Collection: Women
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.Collection: Women
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reasonCollection: Peace
School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.Collection: Teacher
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.Collection: Trust
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.Collection: Men
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.Collection: Believe
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.Collection: Strong
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?Collection: Two
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.Collection: Men
Those who can't teach - administrate. Those who can't administrate - go into politics.Collection: Teach