Always remember this: If you don’t attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
H. L. MENCKENEquality 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.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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The 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.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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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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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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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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Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
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Under 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.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
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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.
H. L. MENCKEN