Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
Mencken Quotes part 2
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exfoliated.
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.
To sum up:
The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.
Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
The more I know about people, the better I like my dog.
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
Democracy is good for everyone but the people.
Democracy: The theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that, he begins to bunch them.
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, regardless of what is right.
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that, he begins to bunch them.
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
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