Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid… — 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
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change… — 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 only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do. — 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
![“It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f30/h-l-mencken-245_business_it-is-a-politician-s-business-to-get-and_410481.jpg)
![“All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c9f/h-l-mencken-245_amusement_all-zoos-actually-offer-to-the-public-in_2331099.jpg)
![“[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/774/h-l-mencken-245_contribution_government-s-great-contribution-to-human_2023094.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” 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)
