Back in the 1920s, Mencken was influencing a generation of educated people. He was a journalist, satirist and social critic, a cynic and free thinker, known as either the “Sage of Baltimore” or the “Bad Boy of Baltimore.” As well known and influential as he was in the 1920s, Mencken is sadly unfamiliar to many educated people today. And even though he passed in 1956, Mencken knew where America was headed long before today. Writing in the Baltimore Sun back in 1937, Mencken believed that, by now, “the incurable idiots may conceivably constitute an absolute majority of the population.” FULL ARTICLE
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Hard to come up with a favorite Mencken quote, since there’s so many good ones, but here goes:
“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.”
How about this one?
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.”
“Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?”
How about that one?
Thought I posted this yesterday. I’ll try again.
“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H. L. Mencken on elections
Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920
“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.”
That’s my all time favorite – although these others here are really good too.
I use this one just about everywhere:
“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”
I don’t remember if it was Menken or Barnum that said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Populace.”
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