The Mencken Society

Promoting the living works of Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore"

  • A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.
  • Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
  • Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
  • Every man is his own hell.
  • Historian – An unsuccessful novelist.
  • Misogynist – A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
  • Optimist – The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.
  • Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. 
  • The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
  • The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.
  • The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity.  It ended, again like the Salvation Army began, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
  • Wealth – Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

Promoting the living works of Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore"

  • Der Tag: September 13, 2025 (Sat)

    Mencken Day 2025 will be celebrated at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathederal St, on September 13, 2025 (Saturday) starting at 10:30. 10:30 AM Annual Meeting of The Mencken Society at thePratt Auditorium. After the Business Meeting Ed Larsonand Darryl Hart will hold a conversation about Menckenand the Scopes trial. Dr Larson is author…

  • Der Tag 2024

    September 14, 2024 (Saturday) Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathederal St 10:30 AM Annual Meeting of The Mencken Society. Speakers: Fred Hobson by way of remote conferencing and a discussion between John Barr, professor of history at Lone Star College, and Darryl Hart. 2:00 PM The 2024 Mencken Memorial Lecture will be presented by Thomas…

  • Last Week with H. L. Mencken (Feb. 3, 2023 edition)

    January 29 – “Inherit the Wind” is returning to the stage in Albuquerque: “This enthralling drama is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, which resulted in John T. Scopes’ being convicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to a high school science class, contrary to a Tennessee law. The character of…

  • Last Week with H. L. Mencken (Jan. 27, 2023 edition)

    January 22 — Anthony J. DeBlasi on the intelligence of the American public: “H. L. Mencken had something to say about terminal dumbing, back in 1920, that makes me wonder if he was joking: ‘As democracy is perfected,’ he said, ‘the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.…

  • Last Week with H. L. Mencken (Jan. 23, 2023 edition)

    See how writers were quoting Mencken last week and which quotations they used. January 16 — From Herb Caen at the Anderson Valley Advertiser: “What I consider the most cynical utterance in the entire literature of Americana — H.L. Mencken’s ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public’ — presents a…

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