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.
H. L. MENCKENPeople 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?
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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.
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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 kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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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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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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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.
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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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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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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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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. MENCKEN






