H.L. Mencken Quotes
“the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.” ― H.L. Mencken
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...” ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- H. L. Mencken
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
“In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.” ― H.L. Mencken
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched 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. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” ― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy
“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.” ― H. L. Mencken
“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” ― H.L. Mencken
“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.” ― H.L. Mencken
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” ― H.L. Mencken
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” ― H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” ― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
“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
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.” ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.” ― H.L. Mencken
“The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.” ― H.L. Mencken
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” ― H. L. Mencken
“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. Menchken
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
“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, Minority Report
“Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses.” ― H.L. Mencken
“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.” ― H.L. Mencken
“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.” ― H.L. Mencken
“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.” ― H. L. Mencken
“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. ” ― H. L. Mencken
“The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.” ― H. L. Mencken
“Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?” ― H.L. Mencken
“School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.” ― H.L. Mencken