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.
H. L. MENCKENWhat men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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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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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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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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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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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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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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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN