H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 8

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Office, Political

  "Charting the Candidates '72". Book by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7, 1972.

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• But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Land, Judging

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• Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

  H. L. Mencken

  Marriage, Devil, Ransom

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 6 (1916)

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• Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Talking, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.174, Knopf

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• A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracy, Politics

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• Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jesus, Odds, America

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• Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Delusional, Funny Love

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 1 (1916)

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• The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Evil

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.154, Vintage

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• Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Crazy, Silly

  A Book of Burlesques ch. 11 (1920)

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• The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Birthday, Wisdom

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.311, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love Is, Secret, Married

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• No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wise, Wisdom, Women

  H.L. Mencken “A little book in C major”, Рипол Классик

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• If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.

  H. L. Mencken

  Half, Would Be, Tomorrow

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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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Rights, Law

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• [Texas is] the place where there are the most cows and the least milk and the most rivers and the least water in them, and where you can look the farthest to see the least.

  H. L. Mencken

  Texas, Rivers, Water

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• The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Want, States

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.315, Knopf

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• Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Thinking

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• The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Mind, Wicked

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• Those who can't teach - administrate. Those who can't administrate - go into politics.

  H. L. Mencken

  Teach

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• The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.

  H. L. Mencken

  Equality, Kind, Annoying

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• Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Ideas, Earth

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• Self-respect - The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

  H. L. Mencken

  Respect, Self, Personality

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Laughing, Thousand

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.17, Vintage

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• Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Mistake, Science

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• The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.

  H. L. Mencken

  Light, Forever, Criticism

  "Aftermath". Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.

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