"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and...

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
~ H. L. Mencken ~












The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man wh...
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More H. L. Mencken quotes
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact t...
"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their in...
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
"Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out...
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
"I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind...
"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 ta...
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the reco...
"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 ta...
"Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn ...