The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
![H. L. Mencken Quote - The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/the-american-people-north-and-south-went-into-the--683x1024.jpg)
