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H. L. Mencken Quotes about Freedom

All H. L. Mencken Quotes Achievement Adultery Adventure Age Alcohol Arguing Art Atheism Atheist Beer Belief Business Change Character Children Choices College Comedy Common Sense Communism Conscience Conspiracy Cooking Country Courage Criticism Critics Culture Cynicism Death Democracy Determination Devil Difficulty Dignity Doubt Drinking Dying Earth Education Effort Ethics Evil Exercise Faith Fear Feelings Fighting Food Free Speech Freedom quotes Funny Genius Giving God Golf Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Hell History Home Honesty Honor House Humanity Husband Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Intelligence Intuition Journalism Joy Judging Justice Kissing Knowledge Language Laughter Learning Liberty Life Literature Logic Love Lying Marriage Military Money Moon Morality Music Nature Office Originality Passion Past Patriotism Peace Personality Philosophy Politics Pot Poverty Prejudice Progress Propaganda Quality Quitting Reading Religion Respect Revolution Running Safety School Science Science And Religion Skins Slavery Society Son Sports Struggle Stupidity Style Success Suffering Sunday Sympathy Teaching Temptation Time Today Tragedy Trust Truth Virtue Voting Waiting War Water Weakness Wife Wisdom Work Writing Youth

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.29, Vintage

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Peace, Freedom, War

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Freedom, Democracies Have, People

A Little Book in C Major ch. 2 (1916)

For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

Freedom, Simple, Ethics

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Freedom, Ignorance, Majority Rule

"Notes On Journalism". Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926.

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

Funny, Freedom, Political

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Thankful, Gratitude, Freedom

"A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.

Freedom, Men, Ideas

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Freedom, War, Party

Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (222), 1956.

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.

Freedom, Men, Order

"LIFE" Magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (p. 48), August 5, 1946.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Freedom, Integrity, Men

"A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Freedom, Honesty, Hate

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Freedom, Democracies Have, Religion

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

Freedom, Crazy, Ignorance

"A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Time, Freedom, Fighting

"Shut Down Chick-fil-A Properly" by James Peron, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 25, 2012.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Freedom, People, Liberty

H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.172, Knopf

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

Freedom, Philosophy, Ideas

Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate...Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

Freedom, Government, Psychology

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.

Freedom, Men, Average

Liberals have many tails and chase them all.

Freedom, Democracy, Liberty

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Freedom, Democracy, Politics

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

Freedom, Comedian, Democracy

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

Funny Inspirational, Freedom, Business

"The Divine Afflatus". New York Evening Mail, November 16, 1917; reprinted in H. L. Mencken "Prejudices: Second Series", 1920, and in "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing" edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Peace, Freedom, War

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

Funny, Life, Freedom

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