H. L. Mencken, (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [31-60] of 74 H. L. Mencken quotesH. L. Mencken QuotesH. L. Mencken Previous 30 quotes Next 30 quotes What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.~ H. L. Mencken The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.~ H. L. Mencken For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.~ H. L. Mencken 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 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. Mencken Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.~ H. L. Mencken The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.~ H. L. Mencken The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo.~ H. L. Mencken No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.~ H. L. Mencken The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.~ H. L. Mencken A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.~ H. L. Mencken Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.~ H. L. Mencken The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.~ H. L. Mencken 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 People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.~ H. L. Mencken To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.~ H. L. Mencken 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 All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.~ H. L. Mencken All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.~ H. L. Mencken Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.~ H. L. Mencken I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.~ H. L. Mencken It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.~ H. L. Mencken It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.~ H. L. Mencken No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.~ H. L. Mencken [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 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 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, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.~ H. L. Mencken The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when the fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.~ H. L. Mencken The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.~ H. L. Mencken Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.~ H. L. Mencken Previous 30 quotes Next 30 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print