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 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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
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.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Life is a dead-end street.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Time stays, we go.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Every man is his own hell.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.
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.
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!
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Honor is simply the morality of superior men.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
All government, of course, is against liberty.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Temptation is a woman’s weapon and man’s excuse.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
American journalist and writer (1880-1956)