H. L. Mencken Quotes

The primitive simplicity of their [the masses'] minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.

The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology.... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called 'education.' Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.

What kind of person would run for president of the United States in today's political climate? It would have to be somebody who's never really been drunk in public, who's never had an affair, who never shoplifted when they were a little boy, who never had any sort of counseling at all. I just don't know how you go through your life meeting people, experiencing everything you can, trying to absorb, and not make some of those mistakes. It's impossible.

You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.

Every politician just has to remember how he got his position in the first place. A young candidate running for Congress or any outsider interested in public office could only achieve his goals by relying on soft power. They could not force anyone to vote for them. They needed to convince their potential voters, they needed to do fundraising, they needed to be attractive candidates.

A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.

If you're going to get up to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath you've got to figure out how you put people in possession of their heritage. To do that you have to talk about how they're being taught, and the imagination of community the people who are running our government have.

No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.

I will not step down, I will not resign, ... I will work to the end of my term in office under the constitution. In the year 2000, there will be presidential elections under the constitution and I will not run in those elections.

All these people that you meet or I meet, there's not a prayer in hell that they're ever going to run for office or major office because if they're that smart, they're also smart enough to know they don't want to take everything that they've built up and have it torn apart by a sensationalized media that's so hungry for any kind of salacious detail that they'll make that the emphasis of the person's life. And then all of sudden, 50, 60 years of hard work and accomplishment go out the window.

My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say "I do not play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn't "at all a good player, in fact I'm perfectly rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

Being the puppet master, it's like running Nintendo of America.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conduction frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

I've learned so much from all my mistakes. I just wish I had gotten my education.

Innately, children seem to have little true realistic anxiety. They will run along the brink of water, climb on the window sill, play with sharp objects and with fire, in short, do everything that is bound to damage them and to worry those in charge of them, that is wholly the result of education; for they cannot be allowed to make the instructive experiences themselves.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education.

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way.

Cash is the lifeblood of your business. There are very few things in business that will kill you, but running our of cash is one of those things. You can recover from almost any other mistake, but if you run out of cash you're dead.

...people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.