H. L. Mencken

Love: the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Love: the delusion that one woman differs from another.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that his wife read more

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to read more

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both commonly succeed, and are right.

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows read more

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous...The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.