H. L. Mencken

"A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas."

"If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish."

"Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed."

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

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

"A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in."

"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable."

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

"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies."

"Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in."

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

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."

"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."

"Honor is simply the morality of superior men."

"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense."

"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."

"Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas."

"Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them."

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."

"Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier."

"Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince."

"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."

"The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated."

"The only really happy folk are married women and single men."

"The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral."

"The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil."

"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."

"To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!"

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

"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."

"When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands."

"Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest."

"Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience."

"Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love."