H. L. Mencken Quotes About Politics

• 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.
• 

  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

• 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.

• 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.

• Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Liberty, Auctions, Politics

  "Prejudices: First Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1919.

• The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Hate, Patriotism

• 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)

• Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Country, Patriotic

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

• The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Enemy, Politics

• 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.

• And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, School, Thinking

• Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Politics, Entertainment

• Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Suffering

• 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.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Office, Political

  "Charting the Candidates '72". Book by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7, 1972.

• 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

• A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Intellectual, Groups

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.69, Knopf

• I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Government, Democracy

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.8, Vintage

• All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

  H. L. Mencken

  Zoos, Freedom, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.365, Vintage

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