Top 150 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.