H. L. Mencken

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

The martini: the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.

A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.

There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.

It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.

The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.