Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an American satirist – one of the cleverest American writers of the early 1900’s. Here are a dozen of his bons mots:
- The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
- For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
- A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
- Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- A man may be a fool and not know it — but not if he is married.
- Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
- Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
- Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
- A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
- Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Wikipedia’s entry on H.L. Mencken.
More quotes can be found here.
