H. L. Mencken Quotes About Politicians

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Democracy, Politics

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

• 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.

• 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”

• When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mean, Practice, Two

• 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.

• No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Enemy, Favors

  "Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks". Book by H. L. Mencken, 204, 1956.

• There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.

  H. L. Mencken

  Promise, Politician, Pot

• Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Honest, Politician

• What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain fact is that, if it be suitably selective, it is extremely salubrious. Suppose it could be so arranged that it ran to 100% a year among politicians, executive secretaries, drive chairmen, and the homicidally insane? What rational man would object?

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Years

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

• 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

• Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Talking, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.174, Knopf

• Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dog, Lamps, Journalism

• A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

  H. L. Mencken

  Doctors, Political, Tin

• Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Hopeful, Substance

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

• The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.

  H. L. Mencken

  Looks, Way, Politician

• There are two impossibilities in life: "just one drink" and "an honest politician."

  H. L. Mencken

  Drinking, Two, Honest

• What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For 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

  Believe, Effort, Political

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

• A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Democracy, Liberty

• Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Running, Thinking

  "Minority Report".

• Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Belief, Politician

• No politician is ever benefited by saving money; it is spending it that makes him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Saving, Saving Money, Politician

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.242, Knopf

• Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

  H. L. Mencken

  Horse, Jobs, Society

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

• It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

  H. L. Mencken

  Jobs, Lying, Trying

  "Notes on Democracy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1926.

You May Also Like:

George Jean Nathan

Friedrich Nietzsche

Mark Twain

Clarence Darrow

Sinclair Lewis

Ambrose Bierce

John T. Scopes