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. MENCKENThere are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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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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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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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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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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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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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 demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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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.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
H. L. MENCKEN