For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. MENCKENAn idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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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 men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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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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After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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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.
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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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The State doesn’t just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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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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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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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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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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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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There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
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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.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN