Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
H. L. MenckenPhiladelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
H. L. MenckenCulture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
H. L. MenckenPolitics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy.. a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose.
H. L. Mencken