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. MENCKENWhen somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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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.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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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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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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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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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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Change is not progress.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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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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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.
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The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
H. L. MENCKEN