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Politics Quotes by H. L. Mencken

87 Politics quotes by H. L. Mencken

All Politics quotes H. L. Mencken’s page

Mencken writes that ideas in politics are often just fleeting thoughts, and that changing the form of government doesn’t change its substance. He says every decent person should be ashamed of the government they live under, calling it a group of men that can be arbitrary and cruel. He also mocks honest politicians as impossible as honest burglars.

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All government, of course, is against liberty.

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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

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

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The worst government is the most moral.

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

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

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

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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

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For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.

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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.

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

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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

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I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

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

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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage?…

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If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free…

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All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless…

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The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on…

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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There…

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When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government…

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No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under…

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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government,…

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All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that…

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And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in…

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The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of…

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Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues,…

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All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid…

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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits…

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Don't tell me what delusion he entertains regarding God, or what mountebank he follows in politics, or what he springs from, or…

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Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls…

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

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

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A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

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[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

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

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

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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.

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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings…

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.…

So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free…

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must…

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend…

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own…

To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue…

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not…