On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. MENCKENNo 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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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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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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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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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
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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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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
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The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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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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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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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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You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
H. L. MENCKEN






