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. MENCKENPuritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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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
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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.
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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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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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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
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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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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
H. L. MENCKEN