A few Mencken quotes on politics and government

via Wikiquote:

"The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties."

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense . . . . So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos."

"One of [government's] primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives."

"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

"When 'A' annoys or injures 'B' on the pretense of saving or improving X, 'A' is a scoundrel."