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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.

H. L. Mencken

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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
States
Newcomers
Unmistakable
Instantly
Subtle
Thousands
Escape
United
Sense
Fetched

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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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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.
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.
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The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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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.
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The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
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