Mencken Quotes

“Perhaps one of the chief charms of woman lies precisely in the fact that they are dishonorable, i.e., that they are relatively uncivilized. In the midst of all the puerile repressions and inhibitions that hedge them round, they continue to show a gipsy spirit. No genuine woman ever gives a hoot for law if law happens to stand in the way of her private interest. She is essentially an outlaw, a rebel, what H. G. Wells calls a nomad.”
― Mencken H. L. (Henry Louis) 1880-1956

“Women's constant thought is, not to lay down broad principles of right and wrong; not to place the whole world in harmony with some great scheme of justice; not to consider the future of nations; not to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before; but to deceive, influence, sway and please men. Normally, their weakness makes masculine protection necessary to their existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal instinct, and so their whole effort is to obtain this protection in the easiest way possible. The net result is that feminine morality is a morality of opportunism and imminent expediency, and that the normal woman has no respect for, and scarcely any conception of abstract truth. Thus is proved the fact noted by Schopenhauer and many other observers: that a woman seldom manifests any true sense of justice or of honor.”
― H.L. Mencken, Friedrich Nietzsche

“[I]f a current president of Harvard were to preach the theology of Increase Mather he would be locked up as a lunatic, though he is still free (and expected) to merchant the prevailing political balderdash. Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas.”
― H. L. Mencken

“What else is talent but a name for experience, practice, appropriation, incorporation, from the times of our forefathers?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Henry Louis Mencken may fairly be ac-
counted the most consistent champion of
individual liberty this country has ever
seen.”
― Richard M. Weaver

“Most pedagogues male, and the overwhelming majority of the female ones, are not even Ph.D.’s. They are simply dull persons who have found it easy to get along by dancing to whatever tune happens to be lined out. At this dancing they have trained themselves to swallow any imaginable fad or folly, and always with enthusiasm. The schools reek with this puerile nonsense. Their programs of study sound like the fantastic inventions of comedians gone insane. The teaching of the elements is abandoned for a dreadful mass of useless fol-de-rols, by quack psychology out of the uplift. No one ever hears of a pedagogue protesting against this bilge. The profession is almost completely lacking in professional conscience.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy