Quotes by H. L. Mencken

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.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

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

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

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.