Henry Louis Mencken | And what is a good citizen?

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."

Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken | The urge to save humanity

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts."

Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken | The whole drift of our law

"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society."

Henry Louis Mencken

H. L. Mencken | I believe that all government is evil

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

Henry Louis Mencken