H. L. Mencken Quotes

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

I don't want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He's a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.

I just feel like sometimes people don't want to hear the truth. It's hard when you hear the truth. People want to hear what they want to hear. Sometimes I have a hard time with that because I'm very honest.

Just because the truth is unpopular doesn't mean that it should not be proclaimed.

With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

Try to live so that you can always tell the truth.

I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.

In a free society, there comes a time when the truth - however hard it may be to hear, however impolitic it may seem to say - must be told.

Truth doesn't have to be liked. It only has to be spoken. Speak it out. The truth may hurt you, but it will set you free.

All I try to do in the press is to be honest about something that I really care about.

What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common.

There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.

I want to be loved despite my faults. It isn't exactly true that I'm a provocateur. A real provocateur is someone who says things he doesn't think, just to shock. I try to say what I think.

There is nothing more mysterious about the concept human nature than about the concept bee or chicken nature, at least for those who regard humans as creatures in the biological world.

We are honest about our methods and our mistakes. We are not perfect - it isn't possible to be perfect - but we are trying to go in the right direction and in those circumstances, it's best not to mystify what we are trying to do.

Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.

I try to be honest; I really do try not to exaggerate the story. I try to be accurate.

Human beings have Love for one another inborn in them - Love, reassembler of our ancient nature, who tries to make one out of two and to heal human nature.