H. L. Mencken Quotes

Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.

Government is the natural enemy of freedom.

But on the other hand government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

The most express declarations and reservations are necessary to protect the just rights and liberty of mankind from the silent, powerful and ever active conspiracy of those who govern.

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

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

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims

The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

When man lives under government, he is fallen, his worth is gone, and his nature tarnished.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

Most governments are designed for the purposes of oppression and personal ambition.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men, no great thing can really be accomplished.

Extensive and organized power over large populations does not suffice to make a nation

When the people are sheep, the government is always a wolf.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.