H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles.

Quotes

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.
Wife: a former sweetheart.
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
New York: A third-rate Babylon.
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.
College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students - there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks.
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

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