Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Puritanism The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Tags: 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.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

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It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Misogynist A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

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For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe… Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

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Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

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Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

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I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

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

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

Tags: H.L. Mencken