"Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon."

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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 not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, ..."
• "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 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 ..."
• "Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian. "
• "Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that ..."

• "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. "
• "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. ..."
• "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 ..."
• "The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he ..."
• "The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers ..."
• "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to ..."
• "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to ..."
• "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous ..."
• "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it ..."
• "The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very ..."
• "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. "
• "There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli. "
• "There is always an easy solution to every...problem - neat, plausible, and wrong. "
• "Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals. "
• "Time stays, we go. "
• "To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - ..."
• "To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would ..."
• "To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10, 000 revolutions a ..."
• "Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the ..."
• "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes ..."
• "War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums ..."
• "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 ..."