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.
H. L. MENCKENChange is not progress.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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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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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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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
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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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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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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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Change is not progress.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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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.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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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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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN