Worth Repeating

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The following are a few quotations by H.L. Mencken who was a journalist during the first half of the last century. His observations of politics and governance show nothing has changed in recent decades, just the faces on the players.

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

"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."
(Think earthquakes, water quality, excessive police and fire protection and such) 

"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."

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

"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."

"Democracy is a fancy abstraction for the collective fear and prejudice of an ignorant mob."

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

"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."