Quotes from H. L. Mencken

To read about him go to the Wikipedia: H. L. Mencken

On religion

• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
• Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.
• A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought.
• It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true.
• The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived

On politics

• The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.
• No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
• 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.
• The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

On life in general

• Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they'd be married, too.
• It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
• I do not object to being denounced, but I can't abide being schoolmastered, especially by men I regard as imbeciles.
• Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
• A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married.
• A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.