Hl mencken Quotes

“Perfect people make for boring novels.”

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

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

“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

“I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.”

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

“One cannot enter a State legislature or a prison for felons without becoming, in some measure, a dubious character.”

“All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

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

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