H. L. Mencken Quotes About Taxes

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

• There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, People, Giving

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

• Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

  H. L. Mencken

  Humorous, Average, America

• 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

• A Progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and meddling, more regulation of private affairs and less liberty. In general, he would be inclined to regard the repeal of any tax as outrageous.

  H. L. Mencken

  Liberty, Would Be, Favors

• Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Law, Two

  Lapham's Quarterly, Alexander Hamilton, Ezra Pound, Richard Hofstadter, Thomas Jefferson (2016). “Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue”, p.124, Pronoun

• If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.

  H. L. Mencken

  Half, Would Be, Tomorrow

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