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. MENCKENMisogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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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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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
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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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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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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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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. MENCKEN -
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
H. L. MENCKEN -
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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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 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 the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. MENCKEN






