It remains impossible… to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mysterious merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale – that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a kind of superiority.
Henry Louis Mencken Quotes
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in front of patriotic passion.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
(The demagogue:) His actual purpose is never concealed from the judicious. He is always after a job for himself, and if he talks loudly enough and foolishly enough he not infrequently gets it. There then begins an inevitable cycle of disillusion. His poor victims, reaching out for the moon, find to their disquiet that what […]
