H. L. Mencken Quotes

• 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.

  318 Copy quote
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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

  183 Copy quote

• The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Success, Truth, Liars

  H. L. Mencken (1924). “Prejudices Fourth Series”

  111 Copy quote

• 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. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Office

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

  146 Copy quote

• 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)

  38 Copy quote

• There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligence, Underestimate

  15 Copy quote

• It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Classic, Moron

  59 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, Freedom, War

  118 Copy quote

• People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

  H. L. Mencken

  Cheating, Honesty, Lying

  108 Copy quote

• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Cynical, Doctrine

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.76, Knopf

  208 Copy quote

• Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

  H. L. Mencken

  Motivational, Religion, Atheism

  173 Copy quote

• Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.

  H. L. Mencken

  People, Cynical, Idiot

  42 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Simple, Ethics

  88 Copy quote

• Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Badass, Anger

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  124 Copy quote

• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Social Taboos

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.145, Vintage

  169 Copy quote

• The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Rights, Desert, Belief

  "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (Varieties of Envy)". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1995.

  25 Copy quote

• When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

  107 Copy quote

• 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.

  40 Copy quote

• The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

  H. L. Mencken

  Educational, Simple, Ideas

  H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.222, Regnery Publishing

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  121 Copy quote

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

  H. L. Mencken

  Years, People, Records

  Chicago Tribune, 19 Sept. 1926.

  24 Copy quote

• Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

  H. L. Mencken

  God, Being Happy, Cynical

  A Mencken Chrestomathy ch. 30 (1949)

  105 Copy quote

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Political, Promise, Missionary

  72 Copy quote

• When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

  H. L. Mencken

  34 Copy quote

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