Quote

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.

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
Side
Label
Sides
Parties
Choices
Practicals
Issuing
Party
Labels
Demagogues
Whatever
Practical
Rabble
War
Cry
Plutocracy
Lead
Preposterous
Choice
Cries

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

Image
Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
H. L. Mencken
Image
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
H. L. Mencken
Image
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
H. L. Mencken
Image
It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
H. L. Mencken
Image
If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
H. L. Mencken
Image
I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
H. L. Mencken
Image
When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
H. L. Mencken
Image
High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
H. L. Mencken
Image
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
H. L. Mencken
Image
Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
H. L. Mencken
Image
The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
H. L. Mencken
Image
On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
H. L. Mencken