Change is not progress.
H. L. MENCKENThe common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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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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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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
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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.
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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 demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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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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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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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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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
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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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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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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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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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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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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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?
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN