The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. MENCKENDon’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
-
-
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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 -
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. MENCKEN -
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. MENCKEN -
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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 -
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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 -
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
H. L. MENCKEN -
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H. L. MENCKEN -
There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
H. L. MENCKEN -
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. MENCKEN -
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
H. L. MENCKEN -
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.
H. L. MENCKEN -
It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
H. L. MENCKEN