For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKENDon’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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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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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.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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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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Change is not progress.
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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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There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
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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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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 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