H. L. Mencken

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man read more

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the read more

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation read more

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

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.

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.