All [of the American's] foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.Source: Prejudices: Third Series: "On Being an American", p. 43 HL Mencken (1922)
A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.Source: H.G. Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization, 1921
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.Source: HL Menkcen (Unsourced)
The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.HL Mencken (Notes on Democracy, 1926, Part III, p. 148)
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.H.L. Mencken (Chicago Tribune, January 30th, 1927)
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.H.L. Mencken
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.H.L. Mencken
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.H.L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.H.L. Mencken
[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.H.L. Mencken
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.H. L. Mencken (Bayard vs. Lionheart, 1920)
