Quote

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

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
Freedom
Compromise
Humiliations
Order
Near
Dishonorable
Many
Anywhere
Indistinguishable
Make
Politician
Compromises
Men
Office
Professionally
Becomes
Humiliation
Democracy
Submit
High
Professional

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
H. L. Mencken
Image
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
H. L. Mencken
Image
God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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
The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken
Image
How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
H. L. Mencken
Image
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
H. L. Mencken
Image
[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
H. L. Mencken