I'm Not Mencken This Up

Friday would be the 128th birthday of H.L. Mencken, who was known as the Sage of Baltimore. Now, that might not seem like a terribly competitive title, but no one turned a phrase like H.L. So I'm going to get out of the way and offer some all-too-apt quotes:

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.