H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.
Democracy must be a sound scheme at bottom, else it would not survive such cruel strains.
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.