All Men Are Frauds. The Only Difference Between Them Is That Some Admit It. I Myself Deny It.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience Is A Mother-In-Law Whose Visit Never Ends.
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.
Misogynist: A Man Who Hates Women As Much As Women Hate One Another.
An Idealist Is One Who, On Noticing That A Rose Smells Better Than A Cabbage, Concludes That It Will Also Make Better Soup.
Nobody Ever Went Broke Underestimating The Intelligence Of The American Public.
Democracy Is The Theory That The Common People Know What They Want And Deserve To Get It Good And Hard.
For It Is Mutual Trust, Even More Than Mutual Interest That Holds Human Associations Together. Our Friends Seldom Profit Us But They Make Us Feel Safe… Marriage Is A Scheme To Accomplish Exactly That Same End.
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.
To Die For An Idea; It Is Unquestionably Noble. But How Much Nobler It Would Be If Men Died For Ideas That Were True!
The Older I Grow The More I Distrust The Familiar Doctrine That Age Brings Wisdom.
A Judge Is A Law Student Who Marks His Own Examination Papers.
Unquestionably, There Is Progress. The Average American Now Pays Out Twice As Much In Taxes As He Formerly Got In Wages.
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.
The Chief Value Of Money Lies In The Fact That One Lives In A World In Which It Is Overestimated.
A Celebrity Is One Who Is Known To Many Persons He Is Glad He Doesn’t Know.
A Poet More Than Thirty Years Old Is Simply An Overgrown Child.
Any Man Who Afflicts The Human Race With Ideas Must Be Prepare To See Them Misunderstood.
For Centuries, Theologians Have Been Explaining The Unknowable In Terms Of The-Not-Worth-Knowing.
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.
The Cure For The Evils Of Democracy Is More Democracy!
Conscience Is The Inner Voice That Warns Us Somebody May Be Looking.
It Is Impossible To Imagine Goethe Or Beethoven Being Good At Billiards Or Golf.
The Capacity Of Human Beings To Bore One Another Seems To Be Vastly Greater Than That Of Any Other Animal.
A Cynic Is A Man Who, When He Smells Flowers, Looks Around For A Coffin.
Philosophy Consists Very Largely Of One Philosopher Arguing That All Others Are Jackasses. He Usually Proves It, And I Should Add That He Also Usually Proves That He Is One Himself.
Whenever You Hear A Man Speak Of His Love For His Country, It Is A Sign That He Expects To Be Paid For It.
After All, All He Did Was String Together A Lot Of Old, Well-Known Quotations.
Every Decent Man Is Ashamed Of The Government He Lives Under.
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.
Love Is The Triumph Of Imagination Over Intelligence.
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.
I Believe That All Government Is Evil, And That Trying To Improve It Is Largely A Waste Of Time.
Criticism Is Prejudice Made Plausible.
Follow me on twitter here.