Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
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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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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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.
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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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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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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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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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.
H. L. MENCKEN -
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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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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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.
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Change is not progress.
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The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
H. L. MENCKEN






