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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H. L. Mencken

Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
H. L. MENCKEN

Believe Men Suffering True
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Government Integrity Live Men Shame
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H. L. MENCKEN

Difference Kind Smart Stay
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Goodness Hands Right
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

Cheating Expectation Government Honesty Humanity Lying Need People Resistance
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Deserve Freedom People Theory
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy End Freedom Government Imagination Policy Practice Safety
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
H. L. MENCKEN

Death Fear Law Process Talk
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fools Funny Himself Man Marriage
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
H. L. MENCKEN

Build Hate Love Religion
Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
H. L. MENCKEN

Discovery Government Human Liberty Wisdom
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. MENCKEN

Food Politics Promise
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Education Knowledge Simplicity Teaching Wonderful
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN

Himself Men Oneself
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

Fight Government People Wrong
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

Humor Justice Passion Patriot Presence

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

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