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Henry Mencken

Henry Mencken
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakeable egoism.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
Every government is a scoundrel.
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.