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No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

H. L. Mencken

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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Courage Emotion Fear Himself Men Safety
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKEN

Death Flower Funny Humor
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MENCKEN

Animal Art Democracy Science
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN

Feminism Hate Man Women
The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.
H. L. MENCKEN

Differences Freedom Honesty Hypocrisy Men Pursue
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Funny Limitation Oneself Politics
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. MENCKEN

Funny Justice Law Student
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
H. L. MENCKEN

Danger Democracy Freedom Scare
The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
H. L. MENCKEN

Government Politics Yourself
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKEN

Choice Moral Philosophy Problem Simplicity Wrong
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

Democracy Freedom Right Rule Success War
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fear God Happiness
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Freedom Imagination World
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.
H. L. MENCKEN

Citizenship Liberty Lost People War
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. MENCKEN

Beginning Fight Freedom Human Law Oppression Stop Time
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Government Ideas Kind Men

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

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No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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