H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 5

• The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Philosophy, Ideas

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• There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, People, Giving

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

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• The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very
  friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Numbers, Race, Leader

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.213, Knopf

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• Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Honesty, Mistake

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• When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, War, Limits

  "The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations" edited by Antony Jay, 1996.

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• I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Believe, Men

  "Why Liberty?". Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1927.

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• Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Government, Years

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• The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Latin, Believe

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• I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Wise, Believe

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• It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Responsibility, Men

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• The average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth... It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Average, Special

  Baltimore Evening Sun, February 12, 1923.

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• We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, White, House

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• Elections are futures markets in stolen property.

  H. L. Mencken

  Libertarian, Election, Stolen

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• [Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Population, Citizens

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.147, Vintage

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• The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Fields, Adultery

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• The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Agnostic, Ecstatic, Knows

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.89, Vintage

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• My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Profound, Effort, Speech

  H.L. Mencken (2011). “My Life as Author and Editor”, p.29, Vintage

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• The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Truth, Errors, Discovery

  "Prejudices: Third Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1922.

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• It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Pregnancy, Science

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.146, Vintage

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• Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Relationship, Anniversary

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• It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Witty, Humorous

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• People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Mean, People

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• Never underestimate the booberie of the booboisie.

  H. L. Mencken

  Underestimate, Never Underestimate

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• For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.

  H. L. Mencken

  World, Littles, Truth Seekers

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