A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKENUnder 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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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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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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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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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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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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It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
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Change is not progress.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
H. L. MENCKEN






