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

Tags: H.L. Mencken

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

Tags: H.L. Mencken

All zoos actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

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

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

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

Tags: H.L. Mencken

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

JUDGE, n A law student who marks his own papers.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

We must respect the other fellow’s religion,but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Tags: H.L. Mencken

People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.

Tags: Lee Iacocca

The trick is to make sure you don’t die waiting for prosperity to come.

Tags: Lee Iacocca

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

Tags: Lee Iacocca