The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKENA church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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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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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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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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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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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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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H. L. MENCKEN