A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKENPuritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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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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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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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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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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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.
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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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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 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.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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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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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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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.
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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. MENCKEN