H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the art form of running the circus from the monkey cage.

There is always an easy solution to every human problem-neat, plausible and wrong.

School days are the unhappiest in the whole span if human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, with brutal violations of common sense and common decency.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first.

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.