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Democracy Quotes by H. L. Mencken

49 Democracy quotes by H. L. Mencken

All Democracy quotes H. L. Mencken’s page

H. L. Mencken calls democracy a fragile belief that many people are wise together, even though he thinks they are often ignorant. He jokes that adultery is democracy applied to love and that truth can be discreditable to someone. He also points out that parties spend most of their time trying to prove the other unfit to rule.

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Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

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Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.

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Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

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Remorse-Regret that one waited so long to do it.

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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

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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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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is…

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Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

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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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Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.

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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy…

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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many…

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Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against…

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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a…

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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually…

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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches,…

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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the…

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The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is…

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The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The…

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Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And…

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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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What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put…

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Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded…

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Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man…

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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent…

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

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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.

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Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

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What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

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Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

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Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

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Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both…

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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…