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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?

H. L. Mencken

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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Honor Men Order Politics
Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
H. L. MENCKEN

Age Friendship Remember Yourself
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. MENCKEN

Face Survive Truth
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Deserve Freedom People Theory
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. MENCKEN

Democracy End Freedom Government Imagination Policy Practice Safety
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN

Election Liberty Material Politics
Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. MENCKEN

Feminism Hate Man Women
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN

Himself Men Oneself
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKEN

Death Flower Funny Humor
Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN

Equality Forever Ideal Law Men Priviledge Right World
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. MENCKEN

Citizenship Liberty Lost People War
Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
H. L. MENCKEN

Discovery Government Human Liberty Wisdom
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fear God Happiness
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. MENCKEN

Beginning Fight Freedom Human Law Oppression Stop Time
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Government Integrity Live Men Shame
You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
H. L. MENCKEN

Deep Inspirational Life Philosophy Worth Yourself

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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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?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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