The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. MENCKENFor every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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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.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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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.
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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
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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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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 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.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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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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Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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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.
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The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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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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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.
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The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. MENCKEN