H. L. Mencken Quotes About Freedom

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Integrity, Men

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.
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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
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  It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Honesty, Hate

• 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.

• I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

• 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.

• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

  H. L. Mencken

  Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

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

• There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny Inspirational, Freedom, Business

  "The Divine Afflatus". New York Evening Mail, November 16, 1917; reprinted in H. L. Mencken "Prejudices: Second Series", 1920, and in "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing" edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Religion

• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Respect, Religious

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

• 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.

• the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Average

• 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)

• Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, People, Liberty

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.172, Knopf

• It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Average, Law

• 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

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Simple, Ethics

• Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Truth, Freedom, Philosophy

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

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Freedom, Political

• The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Men, Ideas

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