The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

Meaning of the quote

The quote means that money is more important to people than it should be. In the world we live in, people think money is worth a lot more than it really is. This makes money seem more valuable than it truly is.

About H. L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken was an influential American writer, critic, and scholar who was known for his scathing social commentary and satirical style. He was a vocal opponent of organized religion, censorship, and representative democracy, and his writings on the English language in America remain highly regarded.

More about the author

More quotes from H. L. Mencken

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Life is a dead-end street.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Time stays, we go.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Every man is his own hell.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

All government, of course, is against liberty.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

H. L. Mencken

American journalist and writer (1880-1956)