H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led to safety] read more

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.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more

The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back
to the pleasant fact that there are read more

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back
to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.