H.L. Mencken Quotes - Page 2

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the past, and one must study very carefully the technic of the chief current professionals.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

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

...the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

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, all of them imaginary.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.