H. L. Mencken Quotes

• 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.

  337 Copy quote
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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

  192 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”

  128 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)

  48 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.

  157 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

  68 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

  133 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

  184 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

  120 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

  219 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Simple, Ethics

  97 Copy quote

• There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligence, Underestimate

  25 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

  134 Copy quote

• Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Cynical, Idiot

  53 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

  180 Copy quote

• Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hate, Women, Inspiration

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

  50 Copy quote

• The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

  H. L. Mencken

  Pride, Men, Vanity

  42 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

  54 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.

  131 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  36 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.

  42 Copy quote

• If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

  74 Copy quote

• Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Suffering

  57 Copy quote

• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Men, Progress

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.416, Knopf

  44 Copy quote

• The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Hate, Patriotism

  54 Copy quote

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