H. L. Mencken

“Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

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

“Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.”

“Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.”

“A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.”

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.”

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

“Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.”

“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”

“Life is a dead-end street.”

“Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.”

“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.”

“Honor is simply the morality of superior men.”

“Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”

“There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.”

“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

“A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”

“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.”

“What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.”

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”