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Quotes of the Day for 12 September 2003 - H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken was born at Baltimore on this day in 1880. The son of a cigar merchant, he worked for his father's company but gave it up for journalism when his father died, although he never gave up cigars. His clear writing, insight, and wit puts him in the same class with Shaw and Voltaire, and for the same reasons a great many of his quotes have been saved.

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

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

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
     - All from Henry Lewis Mencken, 1880 - 1956

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