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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. MENCKEN

Food Politics Promise
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
H. L. MENCKEN

Funny Heaven Humor Person Place
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
H. L. MENCKEN

Humor Justice Passion Patriot Presence
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
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Citizenship Education Learning Liberty Possible Reality Simplicity
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN

Leadership Men Priviledge Right Value
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
Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
H. L. MENCKEN

Career Dog Journalism Politics
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
H. L. MENCKEN

Danger Democracy Freedom Scare
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Government Ideas Kind Men
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Freedom Imagination World
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H. L. MENCKEN

Difference Kind Smart Stay
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
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
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
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
H. L. MENCKEN

Easy Hard Love Relationship Stop War

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

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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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Popular Authors

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