"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."

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More quotes from: H. L. Mencken

• "A bore is simply a nonentity who resents his humble lot in life, and seeks ..."
• "A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag ..."
• "A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. "
• "A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. "
• "A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. "
• "A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins ..."
• "A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is ..."
• "A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to ..."
• "A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a ..."
• "A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. "
• "A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ..."
• "A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas. "
• "A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if ..."
• "A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably ..."
• "A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience ..."
• "Adultery is the application of democracy to love. "
• "After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. "
• "Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil. "
• "All government, of course, is against liberty. "
• "All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I ..."
• "An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes ..."
• "Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ. "
• "As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. "
• "Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too. "
• "Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. "
• "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. "
• "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking. "
• "Criticism is prejudice made plausible. "
• "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. "
• "Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. "
• "Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, ..."
• "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. "
• "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to ..."
• "Don't overestimate the decency of the human race. "
• "Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend ..."
• "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. "
• "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. "
• "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the ..."
• "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. "
• "For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. "
• "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. "
• "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. "
• "For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. ..."
• "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity ..."
• "Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the ..."
• "He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, ..."
• "Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. "
• "Honor is simply the morality of superior men. "
• "Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient. "
• "Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist ..."
• "I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough ..."
• "I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely ..."
• "I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe ..."

• "I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the ..."
• "I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and ..."
• "I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. "
• "I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense. "
• "I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because ..."
• "I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine. "
• "I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which ..."
• "If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries ..."
• "If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man ..."
• "If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also ..."
• "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please ..."
• "Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes ..."
• "Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. "
• "In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; ..."
• "In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one. "
• "Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice. "
• "It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined ..."
• "It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from ..."
• "It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man. "
• "It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know ..."
• "It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. "
• "It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, ..."
• "It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of ..."
• "It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort ..."
• "Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age. "
• "Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse. "
• "Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas. "
• "Life is a dead-end street. "
• "Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible ..."
• "Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. "
• "Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. "
• "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. "
• "Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. "
• "Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a ..."
• "Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born ..."
• "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? "
• "Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry ..."
• "Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and ..."
• "Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are ..."
• "Most people want security in this world, not liberty. "
• "Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no ..."
• "No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea ..."
• "No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he ..."
• "No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover ..."
• "No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average ..."
• "No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the ..."
• "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. "
• "Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of ..."
• "Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save ..."
• "One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of ..."
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• "Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. "
• "Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the ..."
• "Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. "
• "Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she ..."
• "Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. "
• "The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that ..."
• "The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than ..."
• "The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world ..."
• "The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on ..."
• "The cynics are right nine times out of ten. "
• "The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter ..."
• "The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist, Jack. "
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• "The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think ..."
• "The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce ..."
• "The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that ..."
• "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. "
• "The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, ..."
• "The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt. "
• "The only really happy folk are married women and single men. "
• "The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral. "
• "The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were ..."
• "The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, ..."
• "The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys ..."
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• "The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers ..."
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• "To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10, 000 revolutions a ..."
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• "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes ..."
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• "We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine. "
• "We must be willing to pay a price for freedom. "
• "We must respect the other fellow's religion,but only in the sense and to the extent ..."
• "Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than ..."
• "What men value in this world is not rights but privileges. "
• "When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the ..."
• "When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands. "
• "Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at ..."
• "Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a ..."
• "Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms ..."