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.
H. L. MENCKENThe kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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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.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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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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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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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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There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
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Change is not progress.
H. L. MENCKEN