H. L. Mencken Quotes About Constitution

• Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won't. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.

  H. L. Mencken

  America, Judging, Decay

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.254, Knopf

• If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Political, Democracy

• I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Believe, Thinking

• If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Law

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.344, Vintage

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