H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing.
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
Never underestimate the booberie of the booboisie.
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.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.
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.