Quote

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 are right.

H. L. Mencken

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Right
Liberty
Voting
Trying
Economic
Rule
Devotes
Always
Politics
Politician
Unfit
Party
Vote
Commonly
Freedom
Succeed
Energies
War
Prove
Antiwar
Energy
Citizens
Chief
Political
Democracy
Chiefs

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
H. L. Mencken
Image
Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
H. L. Mencken
Image
In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
H. L. Mencken
Image
In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
H. L. Mencken
Image
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
H. L. Mencken
Image
On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
H. L. Mencken
Image
We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. Mencken
Image
All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.
H. L. Mencken
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