H.L. Mencken

The words of H.L. Mencken. (1880-1956) Journalist and Author, Baltimore, MD.

· All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

· Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

· Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

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

· I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and I don't want to meet them.

· If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

· In war, the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

· It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that if you were in his place, you would lie.

· Legend is a lie that has attained the dignity of age.

· Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

· Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

· Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

· In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

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

· Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.