ACHIN' MENCKEN
H.L. Mencken died in 1956. Had he lived a little longer, and committed some
of his remarks to a record album, he would have died a few years later.
Thus does the failure to make record albums prove life-threatening.
Mencken is probably best known for one quote: "Nobody's ever gone broke
underestimating the intelligence of the general public."
Or underestimating the ability of people to quote him.
What he actually said, in the Chicago Tribune on September 19, 1926 was:
"No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
Not very well phrased was it? No wonder he was never a stand-up.
A Mencken Miscellany
Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they
want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.
A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know.
Nature abhors a moron.
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the
pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of
it? The first one is
at least disposed of.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
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.
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it
as many as
government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt
it. It is the
only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health,
hearing, and
business engagements, have failed to fool him.
...the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable.
No virtuous
man--that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense--has ever painted a picture
worth looking at, or
written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading...
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity
is the
Christians.
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute.
Man is a sick fly
taking a dizzy ride on it.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of
the improbable.
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity
for clear and
realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is
incurable.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful
for. As for me, I
rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Liberals have many tails and chase them all.
Remorse--Regret that one waited so long to do it.
...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant
and stupid class
of men in the whole group of mental workers.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives
were dumped
into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to
offset our gain of
their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to
the extent that we
respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
A man may be a fool and not know it -- but not if he is married.
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as
used to it.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that
it is a bore.
Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy
crazier.
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that
the average citizen is
half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his
own thoughts.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
Lawyer: One who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
Judge: A law student who marks his own papers.
Misogynist - A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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 public
office.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Tis more blessed to give than to receive; for example, wedding presents.
Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows
to be
idiots.
Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
Jealousy: The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
Self-respect: The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were
dead and in
Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience
of their
parents.
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for
if that were true
then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth,
is degraded in its
very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order
to get anywhere near
high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations
that
he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
Alimony: The ransom the happy pay to the devil.
Archbishop: A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained
by
Christ.
Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven
brag about it to people who will never get there.
Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
Conscience: The inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when
one knows that one would lie in his place.
Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
Fine: A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime.
Historian: An unsuccessful novelist.
Husband: A No. 16 neck in a No. 15 1/2 collar.
Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another.
Morality: The theory that every human act must either be right or
wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.
Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example
that virtue doesn't pay.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy
crazier.
Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.