Quote

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

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
Failure
Liberty
Worst
Actually
Government
Grasping
Men
Arbitrary
Civilized
Libertarian

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
H. L. Mencken
Image
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.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
H. L. Mencken
Image
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The worst government is the most moral.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. Mencken
Image
War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken
Image
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.
H. L. Mencken