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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No good comes from hurrying.
- Yiddish Proverb

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

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

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

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

Necessity never made a good bargain.
- Benjamin Franklin

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

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

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

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate:
he who loves finds the door open.
- Rabindranath Tagore

An ounce of conscious choice is worth a pound of good fortune.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression
and cruelty by the bad people
but the silence over that by the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

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

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

A good question is never answered.
It is not a bolt to be tightened into place
but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed
toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
- John Ciardi

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

Fighting not good. But if must fight... win.
- Miyagi: character in the movie The Next Karate Kid

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience
cannot blindly follow orders.
- Captain Picard, STAR TREK: The Next Generation

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

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry,
that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware
of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
- Bertrand Russell

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

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

A good head and a good heart
are always a formidable combination.
- Nelson Mandela

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

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

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