Facebook share   Tweet This   Email this

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. ...
by H. L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken

Related topics: Cynical Government Political

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken

We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken

Please sign-up for my Free Daily Inspirational Quotes and Insights Email on the form below.

Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken

The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken

Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken

The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken

Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken

Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken

The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken

Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- 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

You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill

A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

Write your Sad times in Sand,
Write your Good times in Stone.
- George Bernard Shaw

No good comes from hurrying.
- Yiddish Proverb

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer

The River of Life has no meaning,
no good, no bad, no better, no worse,
no love, no hate, no fear, no anger, no joy.
The River of Life has no judgment, no expectation.
The River of Life just IS.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is more value in a very good painting
that is completed and on display,
than in an excellent painting
that is still in the artist's studio,
or perhaps still in his mind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead;
his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.
- Lao Tzu

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves
to recognize how good things really are.
- Marianne Williamson

Good humor is the health of the soul,
sadness is its poison.
- Lord Chesterfield

Aim above morality.
Be not simply good,
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau

I am not interested in power for power's sake,
but I'm interested in power that is moral,
that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

This time, like all times, is a very good one,
if we but know what to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.
- William Shakespeare

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything,
I still believe that people are really good at heart.
- Anne Frank

The bad news is time flies.
The good news is you're the pilot.
- Michael Althsuler

Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor
to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates

Be not merely good; be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau

Not life, but good life,
is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates

If I am not for myself,
who will be for me?
Yet if I am for myself alone,
of what good am I?
- Hillel

If being good isn't working - try being outrageous.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

About morals: I know only that
what is moral is what you feel good after
and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
- Ernest Hemingway

There is no goodness in attempting to coerce
another person into performing a good deed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Good morning!" he said at last.
"We don't want any adventures here, thank you!
You might try over The Hill or across The Water."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe

In spite of everything, I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation
consisting of confusion, misery and death.
- Anne Frank

Necessity never made a good bargain.
- Benjamin Franklin

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care
for people will hear them and be influenced
by them for good or ill.
- The Buddha

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

Good works are links that form a chain of love.
- Mother Teresa

Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau

To kill an error is as good a service as,
and sometimes even better than,
the establishing of a new truth or fact.
- Charles Darwin

Regrets are the tears of good deeds left undone
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is not enough to have a good mind,
the main thing is to use it well.
- Rene Descartes

So your father, or your mother,
never thought you were good enough - SO WHAT?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you
to reach the heights of your capabilities
or make the money that you want
without becoming very good at it.
- Brian Tracy

A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland

Bad times have a scientific value.
These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be careful not to do your good deeds
when there's no one watching you.
- Tom Lehrer

Thank you for visiting: A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. ... by H. L. Mencken.

Please sign up on the form below to receive my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie