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H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken Quotes

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Famous H. L. Mencken Quotes

“To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money.”

PeopleStatesPoliticalUnitedPartyUnited StatesAchieveObjectsPoliticianMembersOfficeVotePrivilegeProfitCampaignsDespiteBuyingBrotherhoodSolePrincipalSuperficialCollarsEnmityPublic OfficePolitical Campaign
Book:Minority Report
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“Every lynching deprives its victim of his life without due process of law, and denies him an equal protection of the law. The States are charged with punishing all such invasions as the common rights of the citizens, but some of them have failed in their effort to do so, and others have not honestly tried. Meanwhile, lynchings continue, and though they do not increase in number, they show some tendency to increase in savagery.”

StatesShowsLawProcessCommonNumbersEffortRightsCitizensEqualIncreaseVictimDenyProtectionDuesHonestlyTendenciesInvasionSavageryLynchingDue ProcessEqual ProtectionDue Process Of Law
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.”

MenWorldImportantWarCountryMatterStatesSidesLosesUnitedResultsOpinionUnited StatesAtheismSubjectsExampleProtectCriticismCriticsPositive AtheismImprovementSteadyHarshStatus QuoVitalityTabooExperimentationRevisionFree Opinion
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.”

IfsFirstsKindBookStatesStoriesLosesUnitedUnited StatesNovelFourHeroOvercomingMurderVolumePublishersHeroinesSpiritualism
Book:Mencken Chrestomathy
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“All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor in all its forms, but also for every variety of calisthenics, so that I still begrudge the trifling exertion needed to climb in and out of a bathtub, and hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense. If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.”

IfsMenWayPersonsStillsStatesWould BeChristianFormHateSportsWhiteUnitedCommonUnited StatesNeededExerciseOfficeFemaleHorseGolfSlaveAthleteProfitRingsLikesCommon SenseGuiltyVarietyMy WayAccomplishedClimbsEndeavorExertionTriflingBathtubsDistasteFemale AthleteCalisthenics
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.”

MenStatesLawUsedChanceUnitedUnited StatesHe ManCriticismMethodMoodChosenAbandonedConstructiveProposeJuryLegislatorsPrevailingConstructive Criticism
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“In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.”

EndsStatesPoliticalCoursesPoliticsUnitedQualityUnited StatesReadyKingsMedicalCampaignsGenuineSignificanceJournalGorgeousMenaceSinisterRibsLearFarce
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.”

MenWellsStillsStatesCommonSecretResponsibilityEnemyTakenDutyCitizensAuthorityMassDignityRemainsSpreadTyrannySuperiorsAgentsOperationsDecentPotPenetrateThumbsCastesIndustriousDecent ManCommon Enemy
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“[C]lass consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite-the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron.”

RealStatesShowsEyeBeautifulFormSufferingUnitedConsciousnessClassUnited StatesDiseaseOppositesUniversityGlassesCeaseDoctrineDelusionBarriersSenateMoronPrairieSagacityMetternich
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy.”

StatesCharacterSeemsPoliticalReligionSidesUnitedUnited StatesSeeingEventsArgumentLogicCampaignsDoctrineDestroyedPresidentialFallenBitternessMysticalOpposingProhibitionBlasphemySeersPresidential Campaign
Author:H. L. Mencken
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