For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution and it is always wrong

Tags: H.L. Mencken

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

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Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

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The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth–that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

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To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true

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

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

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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.

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

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The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

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

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

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

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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

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Platitude an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

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The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

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