Who the hell is Henry Mencken?

The ultimate bigot, he was an elitist, sexist, racist and atheist - but damn he had a way with words.

I'm currently studying the history of journalism. It's an undertaking that for has involved spending an inordinate amount of time trolling the net - even more than usual - looking for gems of historical wisdom and eyewitness accounts of events from the Hindenburg to Hiroshima.

Between Google and Wikipedia, it's amazing what you can find. What's perhaps more amazing is the things you bump into by serendipitous accident - like Henry Menken.

Son of a cigar maker, Mencken never attended college, but never the less grew into a talented journalist, essayist and satirist. In the early twentieth century his pen produced cynical, elitist, atheistic, and anarchistic points of view. He was sometimes unpopular, often controversial, and is called a bigot and a racist to this day, but his words still raise a grin (at least for me) and no doubt a few hackles. Here’s my top ten:

10. “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking,”
9. “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable,”
8. “Self-respect: The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious,”
7. “Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice,”
6. “Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents,”
5. “Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends,”
4. “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence,”
3. “Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood,”
2. “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public,”
1.…and the classic, “Nature abhors a moron.”

He died in 1956, after falling out of favour with the American public due to his position on the nation's involvement in World War II and a stroke that left him unable to read or write for his last years. On his tombstone was engraved the words:

“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."

If you’d like to find out more, check out his wikipedia page, or Google Henry L Mencken.