Today in History: American journalist and writer H.L. Mencken was born on this day in 1880. Though he was considered very controversial, Mencken earned respect as America’s foremost newspaperman and literary critic. He produced an estimated ten million words: some 30 books, contributions to 20 more books and thousands of newspaper columns. He wrote some 100,000 letters, or between 60 and 125 per working day. Mencken weighed in with wit on topics about politics, literature, food, health, religion, sports etc., and he ranks among the most frequently quoted American authors.
He had a way with words that can only be attributed to a man of letters. He once described the ugliness of the buildings during his trip on a train this way: "I am not speaking of mere filth. One expects steel towns to be dirty. What I allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in sight. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, there was not one insight from the train that did not insult and lacerate the eye."
H.L. Mencken also held governments and politicians in the lowest regard:
"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."
"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."
"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."
"A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
"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."
"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies."
"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."
"All government, of course, is against liberty."
"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before."
"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable."
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
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