As for the atomic bomb itself, I believe it is the greatest of all American inventions, and one of the imperishable glories of Christianity. It surpasses the burning of heretics on all counts, but especially on the count that it has given the world an entirely new disease, to wit, galloping carcinoma. I have been […]
Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
Painting is the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
Great artists are modest almost as seldom as they are faithful to their wives.
Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility – this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.
An aristocracy must constantly justify its existence. In other words, there must be no artificial conversion of its present strength into perpetual rights. The way must be always open for the admission of strong men from the lower orders, and the way must be always open, too, for the expulsion of men whose strength fails.
In the United States I am commonly held suspect as a foreigner, and during the war I was variously denounced. Abroad, especially in England, I am sometimes put to the torture for my intolerable Americanism. The two views are less far apart than they seem to be. The fact is that I am superficially so […]
The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the middle ages.
