H. L. Mencken

More from H. L. Mencken

• No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

  ‘Notes On Journalism’ in the Chicago Tribune (19 September 1926)

  • America

• Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration⁠—courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

  • Anti-Religion

• We must repsect 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 are smart.

  Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956), 1

  • Anti-Religion

All 63 quotes from H. L. Mencken

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy