Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
H. L. MENCKENDemocracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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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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.
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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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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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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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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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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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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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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.
H. L. MENCKEN