H. L. Mencken Quotes About Freedom
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
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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.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.
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Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
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Remorse - Regret that one waited so long to do it.
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Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
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Liberals have many tails and chase them all.
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I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
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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.
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the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
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I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
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The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
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