Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege? — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
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![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
