The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. MENCKENEvery normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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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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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
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In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
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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 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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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. MENCKEN