H. L. Mencken Quotes

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Its [the Communist party's] relationship to democratic institutions is that of a death watch beetle. It is not a party; it is a conspiracy.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity, are both uncivilized and undemocratic

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim, denounces it, and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

… an apprentice dictator whose methods were similar to those used by Hitler, the policy of blackmail alternating with flagrant violations of international agreements.

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny…

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

I hate fear politics.

The politics of fear are always the same. They are easily recognisable in retrospect. They are easy to acquiesce in at the time.

Any political or philosophical agenda can and will be perverted by power and/or fear.

The Qaddafis, father and sons, speak the grammar of dictatorship: threats and bribery.

The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

Abuse of power comes as no surprise

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.

You use force, you create fear. Fear destroys trust. Trust is the basis of harmony. The hardliner believes harmony and unity can be brought by force. That's totally unscientific, totally wrong.

Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.

One hopes that they'll never be able to use mind control weapons, because we're all done for if that happens. I don't want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

You can't trust anybody with power.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.