H. L. Mencken Quotes About Democracy

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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

• 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.

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracy, Politics

• 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

  Freedom, War, Party

  Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (222), 1956.

• Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Men, Civilization

• 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.

• If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Democracy, Politics, Honest

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

• Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Religion

• Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Art, Majority Rule

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.622, Vintage

• 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)

• 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.

• The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

  H. L. Mencken

  Time, Freedom, Fighting

  "Shut Down Chick-fil-A Properly" by James Peron, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 25, 2012.

• Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.

  H. L. Mencken

  Play, Ideas, Democracy

  In Defense of Women, rev. ed., introduction (1922)

• A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Crazy, Ignorance

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

• Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Faith, Freedom, Believe

  Prejudices, Third Series ch. 14 (1922)

• The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Sick

  Smart Set, Dec. 1920

• Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Freedom, Political

• The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Democracy, Life Is

  'Baltimore Evening Sun' 9 December 1929

• Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Laughter, Freedom

• Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracy, Doe

• It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Life, Relationship

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

• 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

• A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Animal, Democracy

• Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Comedian, Democracy

• Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wise, Freedom, Men

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