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. MENCKENFree speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
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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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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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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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Change is not progress.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
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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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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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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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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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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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After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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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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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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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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