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

H. L. Mencken

There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
H. L. MENCKEN

Honesty Impossible Life Politics
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
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Equality Forever Ideal Law Men Priviledge Right World
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
H. L. MENCKEN

Death Fear Law Process Talk
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. MENCKEN

Funny Justice Law Student
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. MENCKEN

Belief Himself Mystery Right True Victim
On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN

Funny Issues Man Trust Women
The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fight Government People Wrong
It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
H. L. MENCKEN

Determination Leadership Rebel Sound
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
Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy People Vote
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

Death Freedom Ideal Kill Sick
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Education Ourselves Run Time
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Freedom Right Rule Success War
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. MENCKEN

Animal Art Democracy Science
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Gratitude Myself Thankful World

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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