H.L. Mencken

• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (& hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
• The kind of man who wants the government to adopt & enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want & deserve to get it good & hard.
• I believe that all government is evil & that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
• I am suspicious of all things the average citizen believes.
• The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out without regard to the prevailing superstitions & taboos. Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane & intolerable.
• There are 2 impossibilities in life: "just 1 drink" & "an honest politician."
• There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.