diff --git a/Lib/pdb.py b/Lib/pdb.py
index 82b52a3852e..10303c8c975 100755
--- a/Lib/pdb.py
+++ b/Lib/pdb.py
@@ -1238,7 +1238,7 @@ def help():
         print 'along the Python search path'
 
 def main():
-    if not sys.argv[1:]:
+    if not sys.argv[1:] or sys.argv[1] in ("--help", "-h"):
         print "usage: pdb.py scriptfile [arg] ..."
         sys.exit(2)