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Liberty Quotes by H. L. Mencken

47 Liberty quotes by H. L. Mencken

All Liberty quotes H. L. Mencken’s page

Liberty, a two‑headed boon, lets people shape government and taxes, yet Mencken warns it can become tyranny when taken from others. He sees democracy as a rival that often drags liberty into conflict. Government, in his view, is an arbitrary, often cruel experiment that rarely succeeds.

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Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

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There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.

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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

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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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Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

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

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I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty.

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Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I…

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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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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 New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running…

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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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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

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The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.

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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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Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are…

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There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering…

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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the…

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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not…

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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be…

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The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed;…

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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in 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 fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.…

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The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the…

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One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence.…

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The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's…

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

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I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the…

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Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in…

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No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.

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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes…

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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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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

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The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the…

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All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of…

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The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen…

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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above…

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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…