More from H. L. Mencken
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken 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.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken 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.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken 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.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken
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It is the music which makes it what it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little comer of the high mansions of the sky.
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