H. L. Mencken

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

“Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.”

“Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.”

“Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”

“We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.”

“No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.”

“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”

“Most people want security in this world, not liberty.”

“Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?”

“A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.”

“In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.”

“The only really happy folk are married women and single men.”

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”

“The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.”

“Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”

“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

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

“Life is a dead-end street.”

“There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.”