Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.
— H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
— H. L. Mencken
Do not overestimate the decency of the human race.
— H. L. Mencken
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.
— H. L. Mencken
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
— H. L. Mencken
It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
— H. L. Mencken
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
— H. L. Mencken
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
— H. L. Mencken
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.
— H. L. Mencken
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
— H. L. Mencken
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself… Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
— H. L. Mencken
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
— H. L. Mencken
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
— H. L. Mencken
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
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
— H. L. Mencken
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
— H. L. Mencken
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.
— H. L. Mencken
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.
— H. L. Mencken
Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop.
— H. L. Mencken
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule- and both commonly succeed, and are right.
— H. L. Mencken
People constantly speak of ‘the government’ doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.
— H. L. Mencken
I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
— H. L. Mencken
The average man doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe.
— H. L. Mencken
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
— H. L. Mencken
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
— H. L. Mencken
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
— H. L. Mencken
All government, of course, is against liberty.
— H. L. Mencken
