| I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. H. L. Mencken |
| Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. H. L. Mencken |
| Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. H. L. Mencken |
| The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. H. L. Mencken |
| It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. H. L. Mencken |
| All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. H. L. Mencken |
| 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. H. L. Mencken |
| God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, thehelpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters. H. L. Mencken |
| The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. H. L. Mencken |
| A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. H. L. Mencken |
| If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States. H. L. Mencken |
| The only really happy folk are married women and single men. H. L. Mencken |
| Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. H. L. Mencken |
| Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. H. L. Mencken |
| A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. H. L. Mencken |
| A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. H. L. Mencken |
| The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. H. L. Mencken |
| A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. H. L. Mencken |
| Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again. H. L. Mencken |
| Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses. H. L. Mencken |
| Wife: a former sweetheart. H. L. Mencken |
| Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient. H. L. Mencken |
| Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. H. L. Mencken |
| Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. H. L. Mencken |
| The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy. H. L. Mencken |
| New York: A third-rate Babylon. H. L. Mencken |
| Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends H. L. Mencken |
| College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students - there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks. H. L. Mencken |
| Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. H. L. Mencken |
| Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. H. L. Mencken |
| A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. H. L. Mencken |
| It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry. H. L. Mencken |
| Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. Mencken |
| Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. H. L. Mencken |
| Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him. H. L. Mencken |
| The worshiper is the father of the gods. H. L. Mencken |
| Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ. H. L. Mencken |
| Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. H. L. Mencken |
| A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them. H. L. Mencken |
| It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. H. L. Mencken |