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.
H. L. MENCKENThe 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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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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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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Change is not progress.
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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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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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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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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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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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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
H. L. MENCKEN