When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. MENCKENWhen fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
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Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
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The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H. L. MENCKEN