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. MENCKENUnder 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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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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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN