H.L. MENKEN

H. L. Menken A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in. A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground. A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. Adultery is the application of democracy to love. Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil. An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in. Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven. Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.. H. L. Mencken