After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

— H.L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

— H.L. Mencken

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

— H.L. Mencken

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

— H.L. Mencken

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it is aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it is democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

— H.L. Mencken

A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The marks of that so-called intuition are simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, a habitual immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance. The appearance, in the normal family circle, is a hero, a magnified, a demigod. The substance is a poor mountebank.

— H.L. Mencken

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.

— H.L. Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.

— H.L. Mencken

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

— H.L. Mencken

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

— H.L. Mencken