When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. MENCKENWhat men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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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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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.
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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.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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 common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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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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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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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 most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
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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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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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After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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Change is not progress.
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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.
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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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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.
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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.
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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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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H. L. MENCKEN