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
One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.
The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the privileges of the underprivileged.
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.
The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.
As for Lindbergh, another eminent servant of science, all he proved by his gaudy flight across the Atlantic was that God takes care of those who have been so fortunate as to come into the world foolish. Expressing skepticism that adventure does not necessarily contribute to scientific knowledge.
All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.
The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn