When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. MENCKENMost people want security in this world, not liberty.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
-
-
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. MENCKEN -
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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?
H. L. MENCKEN -
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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. MENCKEN -
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.
H. L. MENCKEN -
Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
H. L. MENCKEN -
It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
H. L. MENCKEN -
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. MENCKEN -
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. MENCKEN -
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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. MENCKEN -
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MENCKEN -
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. MENCKEN -
There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
H. L. MENCKEN