black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

H. L. Mencken

There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
H. L. MENCKEN

Believe Ideas Stupidity Teaching Yourself
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. MENCKEN

Forever Freedom Hate Honesty Myself Strong
No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
H. L. MENCKEN

Greatness Help Intelligence Lost Money Oneself People Search World
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. MENCKEN

Funny Justice Law Student
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Freedom Imagination World
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Courage Emotion Fear Himself Men Safety
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.
H. L. MENCKEN

Citizenship Liberty Lost People War
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
H. L. MENCKEN

Daring Lying Man People Success Truth Violence
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fear God Happiness
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. MENCKEN

Argument Crime Funny Humor Kind Poor
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
H. L. MENCKEN

Build Hate Love Religion
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Government Ideas Kind Men
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN

Himself Men Oneself
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Beginning Fight Freedom Human Law Oppression Stop Time
The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.
H. L. MENCKEN

Death Freedom Ideal Kill Sick
There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
H. L. MENCKEN

Honesty Impossible Life Politics

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More H. L. Mencken Quotes