Menckenisms

4.80 Stars | 5 ratings

7

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

5 reviews

4.33 Stars | 6 ratings

8

“Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.”

4.50 Stars | 4 ratings

9

“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.”

4.50 Stars | 4 ratings

10

“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 and chemistry.”

4.50 Stars | 4 ratings

11

“Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

5 reviews

3.83 Stars | 6 ratings

12

" 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." - Mencken's Epitaph

5.00 Stars | 3 ratings

13

“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.”

5.00 Stars | 3 ratings

14

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

15

“Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.”

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

16

“He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.” - Henry L. Mencken, on Calvin Coolidge

4.25 Stars | 4 ratings

17

“A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”

4.00 Stars | 4 ratings

18

“Puritanism, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

4 reviews

4.00 Stars | 5 ratings

19

“The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.”

3.25 Stars | 4 ratings

20

“Fine: A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime.”

5.00 Stars | 2 ratings

21

“Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.”

4.50 Stars | 2 ratings

22

“The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”

4.50 Stars | 2 ratings

23

"The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe."

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

24

"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor."

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

25

"If Los Angeles is not the one authentic rectum of civilization, then I am no anatomist. Any time you want to go out again and burn it down, count me in."

4.00 Stars | 3 ratings

26

“ War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.”

4.00 Stars | 2 ratings

27

“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

4.00 Stars | 2 ratings

28

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

4.00 Stars | 2 ratings

29

”Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”

3.33 Stars | 3 ratings

30

" The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head."

3.25 Stars | 4 ratings

31

“Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.”

3.00 Stars | 3 ratings

32

"All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow."

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

33

“A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

34

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

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

35

“Archbishop: A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

36

“Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will never get there.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

37

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

38

“Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

39

“If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayer's expense.” - Henry L. Mencken, on Harry Truman's 1948 presidential campaign

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

40

“Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

41

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

42

“It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

43

“It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

44

“Judge: A law student who marks his own papers.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

45

“No one in this world, so far as I know, and I have searched the records, and employed agents to help me, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

46

“Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? A: Why do men go to zoos? ”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

47

“Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”

4.00 Stars | 2 ratings

48

“Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

49

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.”

4.00 Stars | 1 ratings

50

“The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked...”