H. L. Mencken Quotes

The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

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.

Government is the natural enemy of freedom.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

It is a crime against the State to be powerful enough to commit one.

When the principle that force is right is become the principle of the nation itself, they would not permit an honest minister, were accident to bring such a one into power, to relax their system of lawless piracy.

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 freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

Where annual elections end, there slavery begins ... Humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.

But even the Four Horsemen of Kidporn, Dope Dealers, Mafia and Terrorists don't worry me as much as totalitarian governments. It's been a long century, and we've had enough of them.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

Power over men is itself a satisfaction, besides providing opportunity to better one's circumstances with a minimum of exertion. Hence, the lust for power increases with its enjoyment and restraint is added to restraint. The government instituted to prevent men from transgressing one another's equal rights thus tends to become a transgressor of the rights of all. The injustice is far more oppressive than anyone man can do unto another, and the interests of freedom can be served only by restraint of government.

Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, miscegenation, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive.

The chief bandit is the head of the state himself.

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

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

Feelings of marginalization and cries of separation are symptomatic of countries where rulers find power sweet and intoxicating, where power is coveted, and when acquired, painstakingly guarded.