H. L. Mencken Quotes

It’s almost impossible to love your country and hate your government.

It pains me, it really does, to learn that there are people that hate America. I wish there was something I could do about it. I don't want young people to be taken down the wrong path and taught to feel guilty or ashamed of their country, which is happening in way too many public schools.

If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?

To criticize one's country is to do it a service.... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

America is greatest country; but not our government.

I don't think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That's why when I attack our country or attack the government, it's sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It's not.

You cover the bad news about America. You do. But you don't get up in the morning hating your country. And so, until somebody shows me lines at the border trying to get out, I think there's some good news.

You can't say you love your country and hate your government.

Patriotism should be sought for and will be found in right living. No man can be a good Latter-day Saint and not be true to the best interests and general welfare of his country.

To their duty to God, youth should realize their duty to our country. They should love and honor the Constitution of the United States, the basic concepts and principles upon which this nation has been established. Yes, they need to develop a love for our free institutions.

Don't you get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system.

I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.

I did not get an opportunity to die for the country, but I have got an opportunity to live for the country.

Let us both small and great push forward in this work, in this pursuit, if to our country, if to ourselves we would live dear.

When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the Stars and Stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country.

If you love your country, then you need to be thinking a lot more critically about what justice.

What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing.

Patriotism is merely a religion-love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.

I hate America. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s got to love something.

This country hates professors. It likes Toby Keith - 'I'm gonna put a boot in their ass.' If you don't do that, somehow you can't be strong.

Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those noble and faithful souls who also love theirs.

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it.

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don't know.

Strong hearts and helpful hands are needed, and, fortunately, we have them in every part of our beloved country.

It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.