H. L. Mencken Quotes

The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

The American middle class always wants to be upper class and is scared to death of being lower class. It's a highly mobile group of people. They're not like the people that want to be shopkeepers forever, have always been shopkeepers and want always to be shopkeepers. These people mostly are insulted by being called middle class.

In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.

A somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth open.... What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition—the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes.

In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum.

Hamilton had a certain social versatility, and in a way, that is understandable because he's someone who rises up from the lowest rungs of society and then scales the top. And he gets to know people from every strata along the way.

Tony Hadley is a big Conservative. He is desperate to become a Lord. He's jealous of me.

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

There are very few people on top of life, and the rest of us don't like them very much.

I think Americans love success - but hate the people who have it.

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.

Class envy is dangerous.

My mother was a waitress in a Lyons Corner House, but she married up. She was keen on bettering herself. She taught me how to use the right knives and forks and behave properly.

I don't have time for their judgement and their stupidity and you know they lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives and then they look at me and they say, 'I can't process it' well, no, you never will stop trying, just sit back and enjoy the show. You know?

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

Now that I'm on top, everyone wants to bring me down. Everyone's trying to tug at me and take my spot.

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

I've got to be high class... Which is sad, because I like bars.