Henry Louis Mencken

Quote link. Other quotes about: right answer: "A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters Dear Sir (or Madame) You may be right."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man woman walk: "A man always blames the woman who fooled him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark."
Quote link. Other quotes about: something man respect women fact lies: "A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition."
Quote link.: "A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america day change mind: "A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic."
Quote link. Other quotes about: men women married: "Bachelors know more about women than married men if they didn't they'd be married too."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human man ideas: "But any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood, and that is what happened to Jesus."
Quote link. Other quotes about: war look: "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."
Quote link.: "Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "Every man is his own hell."
Quote link. Other quotes about: time man: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
Quote link. Other quotes about: wrong: "For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong."
Quote link. Other quotes about: believe men: "For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt."
Quote link. Other quotes about: christ men man good wise: "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."
Quote link. Other quotes about: believe truth man hard: "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."
Quote link. Other quotes about: hate honest: "It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office."
Quote link.: "Legend a lie that has attained the dignity of age."
Quote link. Other quotes about: dead: "Life is a dead-end street."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human never men life wise moon women: "Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosiac, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill."
Quote link. Other quotes about: war hard: "Love is like war easy to begin but very hard to stop."
Quote link. Other quotes about: woman belief: "Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another."
Quote link.: "Love is the triump of imagination over intelligence."
Quote link. Other quotes about: believe man: "No man ever quite believes in any other man."
Quote link. Other quotes about: prejudices live world: "One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human day: "School days are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common sense and common decency."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man education: "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."
Quote link. Other quotes about: men: "...the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right time: "The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
Quote link. Other quotes about: reason world fact: "The fact that I have no remedy for the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong possibility that yours is a fake."
Quote link. Other quotes about: live think man government person change: "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 invariably 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 if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are."
Quote link.: "The only cure for contempt is countercontempt."
Quote link. Other quotes about: never: "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."
Quote link. Other quotes about: wrong human: "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america lost today love: "The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human rule: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
Quote link. Other quotes about: men: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Quote link.: "Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
Quote link. Other quotes about: god man love woman young: "To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia--to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america: "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human moon: "We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine."
Quote link.: "Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel."