H. L. Mencken Quotes

Aristocracy is always cruel.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

Ireland is a place where conditions are never normal—where class is distorted by race and an alien aristocracy.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim to the top

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.

Look at the forces against me. They don't want me out. They're afraid I'll cause trouble if I get out.

Many citizens see all the leadership of these large institutions together in a conspiracy against them rather than in any adversary relationship with each other.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

The world is an enormous injustice.

Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?