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There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.

H. L. Mencken

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN

Election Liberty Material Politics
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. MENCKEN

Face Survive Truth
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Deserve Freedom People Theory
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Honor Men Order Politics
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fear God Happiness
Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKEN

Dignity Human Race
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. MENCKEN

Ideal Myself Rose
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H. L. MENCKEN

Difference Kind Smart Stay
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN

Feminism Hate Man Women
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy End Freedom Government Imagination Policy Practice Safety
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
H. L. MENCKEN

Government Himself Men Oppression
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN

Leadership Men Priviledge Right Value
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Forever Freedom Hate Honesty Myself Strong
Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
H. L. MENCKEN

Discovery Government Human Liberty Wisdom
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Education Knowledge Simplicity Teaching Wonderful
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN

Himself Men Oneself

There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.

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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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