Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKENThe final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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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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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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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 final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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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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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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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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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 common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
H. L. MENCKEN






