Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKENThe 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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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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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
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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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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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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKEN