H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In the duel of sex, woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Hate |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.

Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched 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. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Friend |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The only obligation I recognize in this world is my duty to my immediate family

Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.

Man | Wise |

Haile Selassie

There are good men and wicked. The former should be made use of and the latter punished, without attempting to understand why the ones are good and the others wicked.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Liar: (a) One who pretends to be very good; (b) One who pretends to be very bad.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

Good | Wife |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

Wife |

Haile Selassie

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which the slow build-up of pressures would have long since resulted in catastrophic explosion.

Day |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

Wife |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

Man | Wise |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The scientific impulse seems to me to be the very opposite of the religious impulse. When a man seeks knowledge he is trying to gain means of fighting his own way in the world, but when he prays he confesses that he is unable to do so. .... The feeling of abasement, of incapacity, is inseparable from the religious impulse, but against that feeling all exact knowledge makes war. The efficient man does not cry out "Save me, O God". On the contrary, he makes diligent efforts to save himself. But suppose he fails? Doesn't he throw himself, in the end, on the mercy of the gods? Not at all. He accepts his fate with philosophy, buoyed up by the consciousness that he has done his best. Irreligion, in a word, teaches men how to die with dignity, just as it teaches them how to live with dignity.

Man | Wise |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The worst man hesitates when choosing a mother for his children. And hesitating, he is lost.

Haile Selassie

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjugation of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security. But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honour them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act ? and if necessary, to suffer and die ? for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Monogamy, in brief, kills passion -- and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization, which is based upon order, decorum, restraint, formality, industry, regimentation. The civilized man -- the ideal civilized man -- is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately -- when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experiences from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing the armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, reducing the infant death-rate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, and making it possible for the Polizei to know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night. Monogamy accomplishes this, not by producing satiety, but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so gradually kills it.

Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth on the fair-grounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the liberals.

Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.

Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties?. but there are no certainties.

Means | Wife |