H. L. Mencken Quotes

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest.

People often ask me where I stand politically. It's not that I disagree with Bush's economic policy or his foreign policy, it's that I believe he was a child of Satan sent here to destroy the planet Earth. Little to the left.

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.

You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.

Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.

One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe.

Mass delusion is the result of the effort. Propaganda is one of the techniques. But it mentioned things like you create a consensus of something that's totally absurd. You get people believing something totally absurd, however that's done, and then the people with common sense come along and say, "No, no, no. That's totally wrong," and they end up being the new kooks and weirdos. They are the ones society thinks are cockeyed and weird.

Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know.

I believe in style, not fashion.

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.

Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!

As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city.

I personally do not believe in the word style. Why? Because, unless there are human beings with three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are structually different from us, there can be no different style of fighting.

The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.

I myself believe that there is in every painter's life a period of making absurdities. In my case I think that period is already long past.

Half-wits talk much, but say little.

You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library. She pointed to the shelf opposite. Over there was Catch-22, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.

My worryingly paradoxical thought process could be summarized thus: Thank God I don't believe in the secret rulers of the world. Imagine what the secret rulers of the world might do to me if I did!