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. MENCKENThe one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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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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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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 final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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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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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
H. L. MENCKEN