H. L. Mencken: Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.

The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

H. L. Mencken

vanity pride men

No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

H. L. Mencken

favors men enemy

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

H. L. Mencken

political missionary promise

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

freedom integrity men

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

H. L. Mencken

mistake men thinking

Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

H. L. Mencken

class men mean

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

H. L. Mencken

criminals humor funny

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

H. L. Mencken

humorous witty funny

Never underestimate the booberie of the booboisie.

H. L. Mencken

never-underestimate underestimate

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself up out of the dark abyss of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

H. L. Mencken

humor dog dark

There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."

H. L. Mencken

honest drinking two

Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.

H. L. Mencken

decorum should matter

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.

H. L. Mencken

christian long hands

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.

H. L. Mencken

boys believe school

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

H. L. Mencken

freedom men order

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

H. L. Mencken

adultery fields simple

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

H. L. Mencken

patriotism hate country

Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.

H. L. Mencken

university-professors cutting men

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

H. L. Mencken

humor flower funny

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

H. L. Mencken

anniversary love relationship