H. L. Mencken Quotes

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  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. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.29, Vintage

  165 Copy quote

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Heart, Land

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

  289 Copy quote

• The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

  97 Copy quote

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Classic, Moron

  44 Copy quote

• The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Office

  "Charting the Candidates '72" by Ronald Van Doren, 1972.

  129 Copy quote

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Success, Truth, Liars

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

  84 Copy quote

• 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

  Cheating, Honesty, Lying

  89 Copy quote

• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Social Taboos

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

  144 Copy quote

• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Cynical, Doctrine

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.76, Knopf

  190 Copy quote

• Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Badass, Anger

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  112 Copy quote

• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, People

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 2 (1916)

  25 Copy quote

• The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

  H. L. Mencken

  Educational, Simple, Ideas

  H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.222, Regnery Publishing

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  Motivational, Religion, Atheism

  139 Copy quote

• The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.

  H. L. Mencken

  Want, States

  53 Copy quote

• For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Simple, Ethics

  71 Copy quote

• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Ignorance, Majority Rule

  "Notes On Journalism". Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926.

  103 Copy quote

• After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.

  H. L. Mencken

  Done, Hell, Said

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Order

  "LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (p. 48), August 5, 1946.

  33 Copy quote

• A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Political, Drug

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.423, Knopf

  10 Copy quote

• Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Liberty, Arbitrary

  "Minority Report".

  11 Copy quote

• When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

  H. L. Mencken

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Average

  11 Copy quote

• [T]he 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

  Fighting, Government, People

  11 Copy quote

• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

  H. L. Mencken

  Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

  32 Copy quote

• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Social Taboos

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

  39 Copy quote

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