The Scathing Pen of That Ol' Curmudgeon H.L. Mencken

He was born Henry Louis Mencken on September 12, 1880 in Baltimore, though most of us know him as H.L. Mencken. He wrote such bristling prose that if you look up the word "curmudgeon" in the dictionary it would have a picture of Mencken.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about him:
Mencken was probably the most influential American literary critic in the 1920s, and he often used his criticism as a point of departure to jab at various American social and cultural weaknesses. His reviews and miscellaneous essays filled six volumes aptly titled Prejudices (1919–27). In literature he fought against what he regarded as fraudulently successful writers and worked for the recognition of such outstanding newcomers as Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis. He jeered at American sham, pretension, provincialism, and prudery, and he ridiculed the nation’s organized religion, business, and middle class (or “booboisie”). 

Two recent references to Mencken in a short period of time instilled in me a desire to share a few of his quotes today. The first was an extremely well-written review of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The reviewer demonstrates (a) that he has a point-of-view, and (b) that he is more than familiar with the arc of Fitzgerald's career, shining fresh light on the work he's done up to this point in time. I have included a link at the end of this blog post and--if you are a writer or critic--would encourage you to check it out.

The second was this quote that Ken Burns cited in his documentary on Prohibition, reproduced here:

"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished." --H.L. Mencken

If his barbed wit reminds you of Nietzsche or Twain, there's good reason. Both of these writers were among his influences. What follows are quotes from the pointed pen of this prickly purveyor of perspicacious sagacity.

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"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

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

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

"The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians."

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking."

"It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf."


Related Links
Superb review of Fitzgerald's Gatsby. Don't stop at the beginning which is harsh. Read it to the end. It's rich.
Britannica entry on Mencken 

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.