H. L. Mencken

Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead.

Man makes love by braggadocio, and woman makes love by listening.

Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.

Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason

Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.

The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.

The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.

Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.